Here is How Music Works

Life continues to zip along. I can’t believe how well things are going. ALMOST can’t believe. I am careful to avoid saying things like “can’t believe,” “unbelievable,” “incredible,” and “fantastic,” because they all imply unbelief.

I’ve learned some remarkable things about music.

Sometimes I’m shocked at the density of the human race. Every so often, I realize there is something we should have realized ages ago, yet which we somehow managed to miss. For example, we’ve done things to make trash bags easier to tie. We put cinching loops in the mouths, or we put ears on the bags so we can tie them in knots. That took decades. Why didn’t someone do it within months of the debut of plastic trash bags? It’s so obvious, it should have happened much sooner.

Now that I’m starting to understand written music, I’m stunned at how bad teachers are. I worked with a classical pianist for several years, and he never told me important things I needed to know.

First of all, rhythm is much, much more important than pitch. The correct pitches, without rhythm, are noise. The correct rhythm, with random pitches, is music. When you compose, the ability to write rhythms is crucial. If you can write a rhythm down, even if the pitches are wrong, you can easily fix the pitches later. If you can’t get the rhythms right, you’re incompetent and helpless.

Second, written music is like English. It’s broken up into short rhythmic patterns which are homologous to words. If you practice reading rhythms, without changing the pitch, you start to recognize these patterns, and you begin hearing them in your head before you play them. You no longer have to count out the beats, which is impossible at performance tempos.

Third, you should take this language-like quality into account when you write music. An experienced musician will be looking for familiar patterns, just as a reader looks for words, not random letters. If you write familiar patterns, the musician will be better able to play fluently, and your ideas will be clearer to him. They will also be clearer to you, as you work with them.

I use various methods to get this stuff into my head. My Musition software has been incredibly useful. I guess I can say “incredibly” in that context. I can program it to throw up one rhythm pattern after another. It plays a metronome for me, and I tap out the rhythms. Then it tells me how I did. I can program it to repeat things I’m having trouble with, or I can simply progress from one pre-programmed level to the next.

I also take my studies to the keyboard. I have a book of awful classical pieces. They’re simple. I put it on the music rest, and I use one finger to tap out the bass rhythms and one finger to tap out the treble rhythms. This helps me to work the hands independently.

I’m still using my Note Play software to learn note reading. I can’t believe how effective it is. It has levels of increasing difficulty. As I’ve improved, I’ve started to get into things like octaves and playing melodies with both hands. If I can get reasonably fluent, the jump to actual sheet music will be very manageable.

I’ve had some trouble with triplets. I can play triplets over eighth notes on the piano, regardless of whether the triplets are written in sixteenth, eighth, or quarter notes. But doing it from sight… that’s a pain. The short notes aren’t bad, but quarter notes are hard, because they’re so slow. The feel is hard to get into your mind.

I looked at all my software and all of my books, and there were no good answers. I scoured the Internet. No luck. Today I decided to visit my music teacher, and of course, he had the solution on tap, instantly.

He told me I needed to tap out “Carol of the Bells” with my hands and feet. One limb plays triplets, and the other plays duplets. You switch hands. You change things up. Eventually, you get to where you have a sure feel for the rhythms. Then you’re in business.

Now I practice this exercise. I feel stupid doing it, but I know it will work, and as he said, you can do it anywhere. In the car. Wherever. In a few days, I should have a much better grip on triplets. I can read eighth-note triplets very well, but the software says I’m going to have to learn to read quarter-note and eighth-note triplets in the same measure, and that’s tricky. I don’t want to barely get by. I want to nail it, every time. Now I know how to get there.

Once I get fairly sure of my timing, I’ll be able to devote more time to pitch and harmony, but with a simple cell phone and a knowledge of timing, I’ll be able to write tunes anywhere. The phone will let me check pitches, so if I can write the rhythms down, I’ll be ready to go.

Today my teacher told me the stuff I’m doing typically shows up a year or two into a method. I’ve been doing this for what? Two months? I should have been doing it from the start. He said it was insane to put other things before this, and I agree. I’m learning exactly what I wanted to learn when I first took an interest in the piano. If I had continued doing it the other way, I would have died musically illiterate.

I’m obsessive with this stuff now, because I’m sure there is a point after which things get much easier, and I want to reach that point ASAP.

There are a lot of software-based approaches to teaching music, but most of them stink. With the two tools I’m using now, I’m learning quickly and without a lot of frustration. It’s very sad that software companies aren’t doing a better job. It should not be that hard to come up with a good program. And here’s something amazing: Note Play isn’t available any more. They replaced it with something fancier which isn’t as good. Note Play is so small it fits on a floppy, and it’s a breeze to use. I’m amazed it didn’t become popular.

People criticize computer-based music training, claiming it ruins you for real music, but that’s stupid. It does not happen. If you can play with a beat or other aids which are supplied by electronics, you can play when they’re turned off. I had an ear for music before I started, and it’s not going to disappear just because a machine helped me become literate. I know there are some people who practice with metronomes until they sound like machines, but in all likelihood, those people never had soul to begin with, and they never had much of a chance of understanding music. I doubt that the metronome ruins musicians. I think it’s more likely that it permits people with no talent to play music by mimicry, with no depth or understanding. I think this explains a lot of the bad Asian musicians who have incredible technique. There is much more to music than pushing the keys at the right times.

The closer I get to God, the better things get. I come closer and closer to seeing my dreams realized. Stress is leaving me. Things that used to be impossible are working out. Within the next few months, I expect to be able to move to another level in composition. The music won’t necessarily be much better, but it will be much, much easier to write. And I may actually be able to play some things.

If that’s not a good testimony, I don’t know what is.

Keep praying in the Spirit, every day, and remember, the promises of Malachi 3 apply to this, more than they do to money.

Mr. Hate Gets a Miracle

Trying to catch up again.

Things continue to bloom in my life. There is no way I’ll capture it all.

My church is completely nuts. The Holy Spirit interrupts every service. We get prophecy and guidance, and now, even better, miracles.

In 1989, I went to Key Largo. My dad owned part of a condo at Ocean Reef. My friend–I will call him Elmer–came down from Massachusetts, and we spent a few days running around together.

Elmer is gay. In 1989, he was still denying it, but everyone who knew him from college realized it was a done deal. This was not a concern to me. As far as I knew, he was not acting on his urges, and anyway, I was not the strongest Christian around. I was about to fall away for a very long time.

We rented some jet skis. The water was rough. The machines were not maintained well. They were supposed to have rubber padding to help riders stay on their feet, but the padding was gone. As a result, the footing surfaces were slick fiberglass. It was very hard to stand up, so I spent a lot of time on my knees, trying to get up. The bouncing flexed my knees too far, and ever since then, I’ve had a little bit of stiffness that shows up at certain times. It’s a very minor thing, but it has been aggravating, and of course, I pray for God to get rid of it. I have always regretted renting that stupid jet ski.

It’s funny if you think about it. It was a winter day, and the water was not clear. I was bouncing around, on my knees, in rough water where I could not stand. The Bible says dark waters have covered the earth (Genesis 1:2). Waters represent speech. They represent blessings and cursings. Satan has wrapped the earth in a flood of lies, and the gay push is a big part of that.

On Tuesday, right in the middle of the gay marriage kerfuffle, I went to church. People were praying and praising, as usual. We went on for a very long time. The pastor and musical guest managed to do their jobs; God didn’t completely obliterate what they were trying to do.

While the pastor was talking, I felt something going on in my right knee. I felt a pulsing, massaging sensation. I knew it might be God, but I also knew it could be a twitch or some other purely physical thing. I moved my leg. The sensation returned. I moved it again. It returned again. I decided to accept it, and it kept going for maybe ten minutes. I don’t recall, but I was probably thanking and praising God the whole time, because that’s what I do in church.

We have to stand up and sit down a lot in my church. When I stand, my knees tend to get stiff, so I get a little pain when I sit again. We stood up for some reason or other, and when I sat, my left knee felt a little pain, and there was no pain in the right knew.

For the rest of the service, I made a point of standing and sitting over and over, to see what was going on. I would stand for a few minutes and then sit. And I always got the same results.

I got up the next day and got on the exercise bike. I felt a little stiffness in the left knee. The right knee? Nothing.

I can tell the difference when I go up and down stairs. It’s very obvious.

For a long time, I’ve been praying for God to manifest himself more powerfully in our services and our daily lives, and he has been doing it. The peace and prophesy and improved worship have been with us for a while now, but I’ve also been praying for him to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out devils through us.

He has now covered “heal the sick.” He gave me a bona fide miracle. I didn’t think I’d be the one he chose, but I’ll take it!

And the funny thing is that he did it at the time of the gay marriage mess. I’m very outspoken in my opposition to this change in our laws. A total acceptance of sexual perversion will lead to increased persecution of Christians. It already has. It will prevent gays and those who support their bad behavior from getting to know the Holy Spirit. It will keep power out of their lives. It will keep things like healing and peace away from them. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. You can’t demand iniquity AND the Holy Spirit. You have to choose.

People are accusing me of “hate,” which is not only dishonest but idiotic. Some of the most likable people on earth are homosexual. It would not be easy to hate Nathan Lane, for example.

The healing fixed my leg, and it also gave me an opportunity to mention the circumstances. It’s hard for the liars to reconcile my willingness to spend a weekend with a gay man with “hate.”

I still hear from Elmer from time to time. He has no problems with me. Maybe hate doesn’t bother him! I keep praying for him. He is very angry and bitter. He talks about killing his ex-boyfriend. He made tons of money and lost it all, and then he got banned from the industry in which he made it. Life is hard for him. I would like to see God turn that around for him. He’s a hardcore atheist.

It’s funny. I’m standing up for God, over the dark waters. And he fixed one of my legs. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m part of the way to where he wants me to be?

The music goes well. I will probably repeat things I’ve written about earlier. I got a new digital piano. Sam Ash sold me a floor model. I tried to save money. At first I was just composing on it, so I didn’t work the keys much, and I didn’t see any problems. Then I started working on “Bumble Boogie,” which is something I really want to learn. A finger started getting sore. I discovered a chip in one of the keys. Because I was hitting the key a lot, it was hurting my finger.

I was within the return period. I figured the Sam Ash people would give me the runaround, but I prayed before taking it back, and they were incredible. They gave me a new piano for the same price. Now I use it all the time.

I’m playing again. I can play “Linus and Lucy.” I can play “Walking Bass Blues.” I am getting a few other pieces back. I found sheet music for “Roll ’em Pete,” which amazed me. I’ve always wanted to play this piece, but I thought no one had transcribed it.

My interval training has solidified to the point where it’s just maintenance. I can identify any interval within an octave by hearing it once, ascending or descending. I dug out some sight-reading software (notes without rhythm), and I’m doing really well. I’m doing rhythm training with two different programs, and it’s paying off.

In the past, I could not get all of my teaching software to work. It had MIDI bugs. When I dusted it off and got it going again, I found that there were updates that fixed the problems. Now it runs as it should.

I learned to play Clair de Lune a long time ago. I could not count out the notes. Not well, anyway. It’s 9/8 time. I just tried to play it the way it sounded on CDs. I sat down with it the other day, and now I have no problem counting them out. When I learned it the first time, I had to guess. My teacher was a great guy, but he really led me in circles. He didn’t know any better. Now things are working. The other day, my pastor prophesied that we would now be able to plant seeds, and they would grow. It’s not like the old days, when everything I did withered. I’m living in Joshua, not Deuteronomy.

If you want to learn an instrument, learn to sight-read. Learn to read rhythms, especially. Rhythm is much more important than pitch. Get it into your heart so you feel and hear it when you read. Otherwise, you’ll have to work by monkey-see-monkey-do memorization all your life, and when you forget things, you’re toast. The fundamentals matter. A drummer who can read rhythm patterns is a better musician than a pianist who memorizes.

Prayer in tongues continues to pay off. The message of tongues is confirmed over and over again by my experience. The growth never stops. It brings supernatural faith, revelation, correction, and miracles. Without it, you will be weak when the rains come. Right now, Satan is raining lies all over us, trying to promote gay marriage. Weak Christians who lack the Spirit are washing away, like houses built on sand. They will believe anything people tell them. They are herd creatures who can hear peer pressure but not the voice of God. They haven’t seen God work in their lives, so they feel he is far away and aloof, and that it’s okay to go along to get along. They don’t think he’ll show up to defend them or to punish those who go against him.

I can stand because God helps me through the Holy Spirit. He has shown me that by fighting habitual anger, I lose fear and anxiety. They are a package. You can’t have one without the other. When you’re angry or worried, you’re weak. Worry and fear counteract faith, which is the thing that gets prayers answered. I’m not as afraid as I used to be. People are small before God, and Satan is not a roaring lion. He appears AS a roaring lion, but he’s really a barking Chihuahua in a lion suit, holding a megaphone. He’s the weak one. He is a mere angel. He is nothing before the one who created him, or before those who are close to God.

We tend to think of the world as a place ruled by two great powers: God and Satan. That’s completely wrong. There is only one great power. Satan is puffed up with BS. He’s like Liberace. Take off the jewels, the toupee, the sequined suit, the cape, and the wire harness that allows him to fly, and what do you have? An old mortal man. A second-tier pianist.

When the time comes, God will send one angel to take him by the neck and dump him in the Lake of Fire. He could not do that to a God. Right now, Satan serves a purpose, so he is permitted to survive, but when his day comes, he will look as small as he really is, and people will say, “‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, Who shook kingdoms? (Isaiah 14:16).”

Eventually, the world will say that, but if you are strong in the Spirit, you can say it NOW. Satan will still be a problem, but he will be a problem of a much smaller scale. Jesus was not afraid of him in the least, and we are not supposed to fear him, either.

I hope people will pray that God will soften the hearts of homosexuals so they can be reached, and that he will help us to repent and pray so he can give us the supernatural tools we need to get people delivered from sinful compulsions. If we can give gays a real way out, many of them will take it, gladly. We have failed them by turning down supernatural power, whining about our unworthiness and how much we deserve to be weak. What we deserve is irrelevant. We are heirs, not wage earners, and if we turn down our inheritance, we displease the testator. Groveling and accepting crumbs is not the way to make him happy. You have to learn to accept what you did not earn.

It’s not All Persecution and Fasting

Sorry for staying away so long. I will try to catch up.

The music is going incredibly well. I haven’t done much in the way of composing over the last week or so, but I have a good reason. I have realized I will never get anywhere until the music–notation as well as sound–is in my head. Therefore I am going back to various exercises intended to improve my ear, familiarize me with rhythm, and help me sight-read.

Sight-reading is important because, like transcribing, it helps you see music instead of notes when you look at a page. Some people get to the point where they hear music as they read it. That would be a great thing to have. Whether I get it or not, I am determined to get to the point where I’m not totally dependent on notation software to tell me what my written music will sound like.

I’m studying intervals, or at least, I was. I’ve been learning to recognize the twelve basic intervals by ear, using an incredible phone app called Interval Recognition. It plays an interval, and you have to push one of twelve buttons, identifying it.

I used this a while back, and it worked well, but this time, it’s going way better. Over the last week or so, I’ve improved a lot, and today I reached the point where I don’t get any questions wrong. I am also replaying the intervals forward and backward in my head after I hear them, involuntarily. I think that represents a big improvement in my musical memory. Things are going so well I’m going from 15 minutes a day to 5.

Rhythm…what a pain. The first time I studied piano, my teacher–swell guy though he was–did not push rhythm study much. He was a classical pianist, and although I may get yelled at for it, I’ll say it: I don’t think their timing is that good. I think you can learn a lot more from someone who teaches a drum line in a public school. I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but you CAN’T PLAY DRUMS IN A GROUP UNLESS YOU CAN READ RHYTHMS. Or you have to have a flawless memory. Am I right, or what?

My current teacher, who is, for good reason, incredibly opinionated, says the wrong pitch in the right place is a right note, whereas the right pitch in the wrong place is a wrong note. He’s right. Pitch is much more easily understood than rhythm. You can memorize all the intervals by ear in a couple of days. Try that with notes and rests. Good luck.

I fired up Musition, a training program made by the Sibelius people, and for the first time since I’ve had it, I got it to work with no latency. In the past, the sound didn’t work right, and the notes played late, and it was useless. I downloaded an upgrade, and I was off..

Musition has a PHENOMENAL rhythm-teaching tool called “rhythm tapping.” It shows you a few measures of notes (all the same pitch), and you have to tap out the notes as a “metronome” plays. You have to screw around with it to make it fast, so it moves from one exercise to the next quickly. Once you figure that out, it’s blazing fast. It has one major problem: the jump from the fifth level to the sixth level is impossible. You go straight from eighth notes to sixteenth notes, and it throws them at you in 9/8 and 12/8 time, at high speed. You can get around that by creating a custom level. Which I did. So now it’s perfect.

I happened to come across an old floppy containing a program called Note Play. This works with a MIDI keyboard. It puts notes on the screen (different pitches), and you have to play them back. It’s a game. You get a score, and you get bonus points and extra time. It’s highly addictive. My PC has no floppy port, but I have an old computer in my bedroom, and guess what it has? I easily defeated the moronic security measures intended to prevent people from installing it without the floppy, and now I have it on my regular computer. It’s very good. You can get it from Alfred Music. Presumably, they have a CD version by now.

I dug out my old piano sight-reading book. I finally realized you don’t need a piano to study rhythm reading. I take the hardest pages, and I sit down and tap them out with my finger, on the book itself. It sounds awful, but it’s actually fast and highly effective. It got me to the point where I could sort of handle sixteenth notes, and today I moved to the custom level on Musition.

I pulled out a few piano pieces I used to play, figuring it would help to look at them. I found out something interesting. I used to play a simple piece called “Walking Bass Blues,” which I really liked, and for which I wrote variations. A lady named Arletta O’Hearn wrote it. I used to think she was just some goofball who wrote practice books, but it turns out she’s a real composer. No wonder I liked that piece. I started fooling with it a few days ago, and my fingers seemed to remember nothing. Every day, I got better, and today I can play it again! I can even play triplets over quarter notes again. I got so excited, I dusted off the grand piano and went to work. I emailed my tuner, and he’ll be out as soon as he can make it.

I’m thrilled about the rhythm stuff. You can’t do anything with sheet music unless you can read and understand rhythms fluently. That’s just a fact. I have to be able to look at a rhythm and hear it in my head. I started by counting things out, but now I’m switching between counting and feeling the rhythms. I find myself going back and forth, doing one or the other. That suits me just fine, because I want to be good at both.

I’m also remembering measures well. When Musition gives me three measures to play, sometimes I find myself looking away from the computer before the third measure starts, because I know what it’s going to sound like. That’s something I need. You have to be able to look ahead when you read music, especially if, like me, you are having problems remembering pieces you’ve learned.

Franz Liszt could take an orchestral score, play a piano version of it at sight, and provide comments and alterations at the same time. I don’t see that happening to me any time soon, but it shows how far some people have gotten. I wish I had done this when I was six. Reading was a total breeze for me. I never moved my lips. When I was a kid, I had a bigger vocabulary than most adults. I read smoothly. I heard the words as I saw them. I would have been really good at reading music, had I started earlier. I’m hoping aptitude will provide some compensation for age.

I see the things that are happening to me as a release from bondage. Very powerful things are happening at my church. The push for prayer in tongues continues. People keep getting revelation. The other day my pastor prophesied that things would change for us. He said we should not hesitate to plant seeds, because this time, they would grow. Well, now. Isn’t that what’s happening to me? Over the last two weeks I’ve been beating things I couldn’t beat in three years of musical study. I have copyright registrations on the way for six pieces of music. I’m even exercising again.

Funny thing happened while I was using my pricey exercise bike. The pulse sensors never worked right, and Nautilus was not willing to fix them, and when I got on the bike the other day, one of the LEDs on the display had pooped out. Great. I prayed about it, thought. Now the LED works, and the pulse meter is working, too. How about that?

My pastor had a word for us. He preached about “Baal-Perazim,” which means “possessor of the breakthrough.” He told us we were going to experience breakthroughs. This comported completely with things that had been going on with me, and with revelations God had been giving me. I had come to see the earth as surrounded by the lies–the floods or waters–of the enemy, and I had come to see God as lifting me above them, into the area where he works miracles. I believe I have broken through.

My prayer life keeps blowing up. Sometimes it seems like it can’t get any better, but I know it will. The progress never stops.

I’ve learned a few useful things.

First of all, prayer in tongues continues to work. The more, the better. No denying it.

Second, the name of Jesus is important. No Biblical figure ever said God would not hear you unless you used it, but if you’re a Christian, and you are trying to serve, it helps. I’ve found that something very strange happens during prayer in tongues. If you pause once in a while to say you’re praying in the name of Jesus, faith will shoot up inside you in a sort of explosion. It’s wild. It’s as if prayer in tongues fills a bowl with gasoline, and adding the name of Jesus tosses in a lit match. You may not be able to discern it now, but I’m sure it will happen anyway.

Third, you should thank and glorify God throughout the day. In this way, you can hold the windows of heaven open. It’s a challenge to handle daily responsibilities and still stay close to God. If you thank God and glorify him, even a few times every half-hour, you will find yourself drawn back into his presence. It works. Try it.

We expect too little from God. Over and over, he tells us he will do things that far exceed our expectations, yet we think we make him happy when we brag that we don’t ask much. Life can be much, much better than it is. God is a good boss. He does not expect us to be like workers who have unsatisfying jobs they hate, and he is far more powerful than the enemy. A while back, I realized Satan is like a Chihuahua that barks very loud. He’s not a god. He’s not that smart. He’s not that tough. He has to be taken seriously, but he is not as strong as we make him out to be. All that barking has paid off. The Bible says he roams the streets AS a roaring lion. It doesn’t say he IS a lion. And besides, lions roar to make themselves seem bigger and stronger. They even have manes for that.

I think music is going to continue exploding for me this year. God is working wonders. I hope you get the same results, or better ones.

Cooking With Sound

I finished another piano piece yesterday and stuck it on Youtube. Here it is. Love those free photos.

I had about half of that when I got up yesterday morning, and I was having problems because the harmony is weird, but I knuckled down and got it done. I had a music lesson scheduled for today, and I did not want to show up empty-handed.

My teacher says this is written in G harmonic minor. I’ll take his word for it.

I think I would go to my lessons just for the conversation, even if I didn’t learn anything. My teacher is an extremely interesting guy, and we have a lot in common. He has a math degree, and his dad was either a physicist or an engineer. I forget which. He’s a conservative Christian. He has an “interesting” family, as I do. He spent years doing transcriptions for music publishers. If you see a “recorded version” book of some rock musician’s tunes, there’s a good chance my teacher wrote it.

He’s always telling me not to underestimate myself. That’s good to hear. I don’t have any real training, and I don’t have enough character to study theory with any kind of intensity, so I don’t know much about the technical side of music. It’s easy to feel like I’m not going to write anything worthwhile. But he keeps telling me the ear is what matters.

Evidently, a lot of tedious musical training is intended to give untalented or inexperienced people something many people already have: the ability to know what’s good when they hear it. I didn’t realize that. I thought everyone could tell what was good or bad, or what was discordant. My teacher says that is not the case. Today he told me it was a waste of time for me to study certain things, because they teach things I already have.

I studied under a classical pianist for three or four years, and while it was a great experience, I did not learn what I needed to learn. I learned a little bit of sight-reading, and I mastered (sort of) several tunes, but I never got to the point where I felt at home inside written music. I didn’t develop the ability to transcribe.

I got a lot of terrible advice. I talked to my teacher about it today. People told me that if I played scales, everything would start to make sense. I learned all the scales. I got to where I could play any major scale with my right hand while playing any other with my left, and I got absolutely nothing out of it. He says he’s not surprised. He studied guitar scales until he could rip them off at 10 notes per second, and he didn’t get anything out of it either. He says the main reason to learn scales is to learn sets of notes that sound good together. Some people are not born with this feel for harmony.

He says he gets in a lot of arguments with people who push the theoretical approach. They assume he’s against it because he doesn’t know anything about it, but then if they start quizzing him, God help them. He knows everything, backwards and forwards.

Today he told me he has taught a lot of people who got degrees in music and were still unable to write or do the other things they wanted to do. Apparently, many music instructors teach ABOUT music without teaching people how to make it or feel it.

This makes complete sense to me. Music existed before theory existed, just as the physical world moved and changed before physics existed. Notation and theory are very clumsy compared to music itself. It takes a great deal of knowledge to notate what people like Ella Fitzgerald have done instinctively.

Like I told him at my lesson, I can sit down and hear a SYMPHONY in my head right now. That’s not a problem. What I need is the ability to write it down.

Here’s what he told me today:

Sounded great, my friend and using harmonic minor and hearing it so well is something I hope you do not take for granted. You are cashing in on some great influences to hear something that isn’t easy to hear and most people struggle with it for a very long time before their ear can even come close to what you can already do. NICE!

If I were plodding along with a method or a course, I would not be writing music yet, and I would have no idea that I had any potential. It’s wonderful to get a little confirmation from a real expert.

I have two challenges to overcome, as far as I can see. First, I need to man up and master timing. Sometimes I avoid writing complex passages I can hear in my mind, because it’s too hard to do the notation. I think it would be smart to study drums, although I’m afraid I’d kill myself after a week. I really do not like drums. But drummers can–well SHOULD BE ABLE TO–play any written rhythm you put in front of them, so presumably, a person who studies drums will have timing by the throat. Second thing: I need to get intervals under control. If you know how intervals sound, and you know how to write rhythms, you can write music on the fly.

Right now I tend to write things with fairly simple timing, and I try to be somewhat repetitive. That’s because it’s self-indulgent to write one original measure after another. Nobody wants to hear that. If you hear a nice musical idea, you want to hear it one or two more times before the piece ends. If every passage is a fresh variation, the audience gets cheated. I try to keep things simple because I’m trying to write popular music, not Chopin, but sooner or later I’ll want to do something a little more liberating.

It’s good to have a teacher who believes in me. I love what I’m doing, but I don’t have his competence, so I’m not as good a judge of my ability. When I hear good things from a source that can’t be assailed credibly, it gives me motivation to do more work. I’m supposed to be doing written interval and key exercises. I actually did a little this week. He gives me great advice all the time, and I do about 10% of what he tells me to do, so eventually, I would like to start doing more.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. I have six tunes registered with the LOC right now. A year from now, it should be at least thirty, and they will be more complex.

God will give you the desires of your heart. He didn’t create you to be a cubicle slave, unless that’s your thing. He is not a bad boss. Trust in him, get to know the Spirit, spend time in prayer, and good things will happen. Give it a shot. You’ll be surprised.

Always Nice to Get Constructive Feedback

I’m getting trolled again.

I guess I should be honored. After all, “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.”

Someone who is so concerned about discovery he or she (I will use “she,” arbitrarily, since “he or she” is tiresome) won’t even use an Internet handle is coming to my blog and posting comments ridiculing the Holy Spirit and, of course, me.

I don’t understand the anonymity. I don’t go after people. I’m not going to get in the truck and go shoot someone. I don’t even engage them on the Internet. There is little to fear from me personally. I can understand using a handle, but if you won’t even go that far, you’re overdoing it.

I think she may be an anti-Semite. She made approving reference to a name which appears on a weird, obscure, anti-Semitic blog.

I’ve received 2 trolling comments. It may be that they came from different people, but I don’t think so.

Summary:

1. Prayer in tongues is stupid and crazy.

2. My music is really bad and will never amount to anything.

3. I am conceited because I think my music is better than the worst music I’ve heard on TV.

4. I claimed I was going to be a famous humorist, and that didn’t happen.

5. It’s good that I didn’t have kids.

6. I am insane.

I think that’s most of it.

I don’t think I claimed I was going to be a famous humorist, although I did have hopes. If that had happened, I would have been lost. I’d want nothing to do with God. I’d be spending money and living for myself. I’d be praying for three minutes on a good day. Thank God it didn’t work out.

When I saw the last comment, the obvious Bible verse came into my head: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.”

Criticizing someone for praying in tongues is reproach for the Son of man’s sake. Jesus died partly so we could be saved, but also in order to give us the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit. His primary mission on earth was to make it possible for the Holy Spirit to live in us and make us like Jesus. This is a horrifying thing to Satan. It’s the reason he killed and tortured early Christians. Once the Holy Spirit was driven out, persecution dropped off, and the church went mainstream, with much less opposition. When people insult you because you’re obeying God, you know you’ve hit a nerve. Satan doesn’t activate his puppets for nothing.

I used to have endless trolls. I was something of a troll myself. By that I mean I engaged in pointless carnal disputes, and I went out of my way to provoke foolish people. I try to avoid blogging about politics these days, and I think it has reduced the troll population, but not all trolls are political. Some hate God. And they hate God’s people, for no reason.

I don’t plan to approve troll comments. That may seem unfair to people who think everyone has a God-given right to have their point of view published, but as I’ve said for many years, my blog is not a forum. If you want to insult me, do it with your own money, somewhere else.

I also block troll IPs. A stubborn troll can always find a way to get here, but I might be able to discourage the weak ones.

It’s kind of remarkable that a person would show up to hit me with discouraging lies, when the things I’m writing are so non-confrontational. I understood it back when I was making fun of Al Gore and the BDS people. When someone attacks you or someone you idolize, you may get angry. But this nameless person is angry because I pray in tongues and because I like the music I write. That’s strange.

The music is going really well. With God’s help, I have figured out how to come up with original melodies, so it looks like I’m going to have a copious supply of material. More than I know what to do with. When God says our cups run over, he is not kidding. I’m not going to be able to finish all the tunes I come up with. I’ll have to start doing triage. If things keep going the way they are, I’ll end up with a tremendous library of original music. My hope is that some of it will be accepted and used, but it will be nice to have, even if I’m the only one who enjoys it.

My new Internet friend may not like what I’m doing, but my teacher–an actual musician with outstanding credentials–does. Here’s something crazy. He composed a new tune and put it on Youtube. At my last lesson, he said I had inspired him. If it weren’t for me, he probably would not have done it. That’s amazing! God used me to wake someone up. And the worship leader at my church is also excited. He composes, but he has been putting it off. Now that I’m doing what he’s supposed to do, he says he has new motivation!

As for prayer in tongues, the things that are happening at my church are astonishing. My pastor has been teaching about the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, he’s telling us things I tried to tell the people at Trinity Church for several years. The things that got me ostracized are now being proclaimed from the pulpit, by an authority figure. The leadership at Trinity Church had no respect for me or the Holy Spirit. The whole operation was a mechanism intended to promote the pastor and his family, and they did not want to spook people. Now I’m at a church where the Holy Spirit is taking over.

On Tuesday, the pastor had us pray in tongues as a group. I would guess we went about 15 minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I was watching a dream come true. The shoots are coming out of the ground. The final fire is lit, and this time, Satan will not be able to put it out, because this time, God is not going to rely on man to keep it going. It’s like the restoration of Israel. In the past, Israel’s situation depended on how the Jews treated God. Now it’s different. In order for prophecy to come true, God has to get in there and make things happen, regardless of how badly his people behave. It’s grace this time, more than before.

My own prayer life gets better and better. Sometimes I get so far into the Spirit, I feel as though my attachment to the physical world is almost broken, and I tell God I’m ready to leave if he wants to take me. I get new breakthroughs in faith and revelation all the time. Every time one comes, I think it can’t get any better than that, and then the next one comes, and it’s better.

Things keep improving. God has made it clear that certain things are going to happen for me. I wish everyone could get what I’m getting. It’s so easy, but people reject it. Or they never find out about it.

One of the things that comes out in my music is the sorrow over the people who aren’t going to make it. In nature, many are born, and few survive. Even in the moment of conception, millions of sperm cells die, and only one survives. In the kingdom of God, it doesn’t have to be like that. Provision has been made for all of us. But most of us will not know God, and most of us will go to hell. There isn’t much we can do about it. If the situation could be fixed, God would have taken care of it. Many of the people I see around me now are going to disappear permanently. I won’t know them much longer.

I am starting to see unsaved people as unreal. In a way, this is correct. Is anything real, if it doesn’t last? The unsaved show up for a while, make a little noise, and then vanish for good. A person’s life shouldn’t be like condensed breath on a windowpane, that appears for a minute and then dissipates. But this is how most lives go. The unsaved matter. But their presence is temporary, and the things they do will be erased, as though they had never happened. Ten thousand years from now, who will even think about them?

I don’t plan the music I write. The tunes come to me, and I write them down. I don’t think they express some true “voice” within me. They’re not what I expected to write. Maybe God is expressing something through me. I hope that as my skills improve, his music will come through me more clearly and in better quality. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.

Pray for the trolls. In God’s kingdom, like the fairy tale, a troll can live under a bridge, but she won’t cross it.

Now With Added TULIPS

I finished a new piece of music, applied for a copyright registration, and stuck it on Youtube.

Here it is. I hope you like it.

I got the photos from a public domain photo site.

It’s funny how this works now. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to get anything written. Then I pray, and I get to work. I usually put in about 90 minutes, and then I feel God’s peace descend on me, and I realize it’s time to quit.

I got myself a new digital piano. The toy keyboard I was using was driving me nuts.

Some of the computerized instruments can be shrill. Hopefully real musicians with actual instruments will play it some day.

Psalm 37:4.

Sow a Seed at the Library of Congress

Yesterday at church a couple of friends showed me a banner that had been created for a campaign called “I Love my Church.” They wanted to protect the design, and they were talking about the money involved. They were talking about thousands of dollars. It has been maybe eleven years since I practiced IP law, and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew, but I knew enough to tell them the figure was a little high. My first boss loved money more than air, and he only charged $120 for a copyright application.

I thought about the music I’ve been composing. It’s all on Youtube. People have suggested I protect it. I turned on my PC and researched it. It turns out getting a copyright registration is easier than ever.

You don’t have to do ANYTHING in order to get a copyright. Everything you create is automatically copyrighted. But you may have to prove priority in court, and back when I was practicing, the federal courts wouldn’t even entertain a suit until you showed them a copyright certificate. Getting an official registration is smart. It’s also cheap.

I’ll tell you what I learned. The Library of Congress (the folks who are in charge of copyrights) has a new (to me) website. The location is http://www.copyright.gov. If you have a musical recording (or anything else) you want to copyright, this is where you go. Depending on the nature of the work, you may be able to upload a copy electronically, so you don’t even have to buy a stamp.

You have to create an account, and any information you supply will be in the public record. You’ll have to give them a mailing address. It might be smart to get a P.O. box.

The fee is $35 per work, but you can cheat. If you write 300 songs, you can put them in one body and call them one work. I had one tune that was finished in 2012 and three that were finished in 2013, so I grouped them separately and applied for two registrations.

The ins and outs of the process are extremely confusing. You’ll have to figure out which category to put your work in, and you may find yourself pulling your hair out before you’re done. I’m a lawyer, and it drove me nuts for about an hour.

If you create a musical composition, turn it into a recording, and master the recording yourself (as I did), you can cover all three things (melody, recording, and production) in one registration. You don’t have to send them sheet music.

I’m not charging for this info, and you’re not my clients, so it may be totally wrong. Don’t rely on it. But it may be helpful to people who have stuff to protect.

It’s very exciting, having those certificates on the way. I’ve never registered anything before. Not on my own behalf. Now if I turn on the TV and hear one of my tunes playing, it will be easy to turn the perpetrator into my employee, taking the royalties and doing no work, apart from what I’ve already done.

I don’t think this will happen, but you never know. A lot of the crap you hear on TV is not as good as my work. A sleazy jingle writer could find worse things to steal.

I’m going to have to leave my tunes on Youtube as long as possible, because they will also be evidence of priority. The copyright certificates will provide the years in which things were written, but they won’t provide dates. What if some goof copyrighted one of them right after I uploaded it? I’d need something to wave in the judge’s face.

I suppose it sounds a little arrogant, suggesting someone might want to come after my obscure, simple tunes. Think of the bad music you’ve heard on the radio. If that garbage can be stolen by infringers, so can my work.

If people end up paying for my work, it means that right now, God is giving me wealth. I have to make sure I don’t leave it out on the curb for people to steal.

God has helped me understand that copyright is the best form of IP protection. To get a patent, you have to do a gigantic amount of work and spend thousands of dollars, and you get a limited period of protection. Trademarks aren’t useful for most people, and they’re a lot of aggravation to get. To get a copyright, you spend five minutes filling out a form and uploading a file, and the copyright will outlive you. And creating a work of writing or music is WAY easier than inventing something. To a person who understands the mathematical nature of the world, it should be obvious that there is huge potential in copyright, and a bigger return for the effort.

In other news, I’ve had a big faith breakthrough. I’ve learned a few things.

First of all, prayer in tongues keeps paying off. It’s the single most powerful, most important thing I do. If I ever got to the point where my life was so crazy I had to make hard choices, prayer in tongues would be the last thing I gave up. Everything I’ve believed about it has proven to be true. Everything. The more you do it, the better off you’ll be, in every way. It will fuel your life and put a foundation under it.

Second thing: last week, God showed me that when I’m struggling to believe, I shouldn’t necessarily think about the big prayers he has answered. I’ve found that it’s more helpful to think about the little prayers he answers consistently. Does God help you find your car keys every time you pray? Think about that when you pray for him to heal you of cancer. God spoke the galaxies into existence. He can put a new leg on you just as easily as he can tell you where your sunglasses are.

This is much more powerful than it sounds. Try it.

Third thing: when you pray in tongues, keep this in mind: the words are God’s, not yours. God is speaking. He is using your voice, but it’s still him, and his words have power proportional to the faith you supply as you speak. If you think about this while you pray, your faith will be supernaturally increased. Somehow, the Holy Spirit responds to it. He will rise up inside you and support your faith. Your mind will be “stayed” (propped up) on God, as Isaiah said: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee (Isaiah 26:3).”

This is not a feel-good tip or a motivational tool. It is not carnal, like the garbage the self-help preachers teach. It is a key to supernatural power.

God has set his seal on some things he is doing for me and some people around me. He has told me this in faith. When your faith reaches a certain point, God will stamp a prayer as “done.” I’m not going to list the things that are coming my way, but I know they’re done. He has sealed things for me before, and he has come through. I think the funniest example was the Coral Gables pickup truck ban. He told me he was going to defeat the people who were trying to bring it back, and even though they voted to restore it, they failed. I have to admit, I laughed. These people were so sure their carnal efforts mattered, and they got so wound up. But it was all a waste of their time. They might as well have stayed home.

Don’t expect it to happen if you neglect the gift of tongues. God has gone to great trouble and pain to put a weapon in your hand. If you won’t use it, don’t whine when you fail. God is not a puppeteer; he will not pick up your limp body and move the limbs and the tongue to cause you to do and say what you should in order to be blessed. He has done so much already; he has taken a thousand steps toward you. If you won’t take one step toward him, you are not worth saving. If you won’t take the easy path he has provided, he may not help you. He may literally allow your enemies to murder you. You would not be the first.

Listen and Dream of Lunch

I published a new piece of music. As I have said elsewhere, it’s not really the kind of thing I wanted to write, but it was too good to throw out.

I’m surprised how well the composing is going. My teacher told me not to underestimate myself, and he’s right. Yesterday I listened to a piano piece written by Rachmaninoff, adapted by Kreisler, and played by Ashkenazi. It was horrible. I could not understand why Rachmaninoff wrote it in the first place, although I did recall something he once said. Someone asked him what inspired him to write a certain piece, and he said something like, “Two hundred dollars.” I am too lazy to Google the exact quotation.

Much of the classical music critics, conductors, and musicians have chosen to preserve and play is really bad. I may never write anything that will become famous, but I’m positive I can produce work which is better than the worst things great composers wrote.

Anyway, here it is.

NEXT CHALLENGE!

I got my latest musical composition whipped into shape. I want to make it longer, but the basic idea is finished.

It’s a really sad piece. It makes me think of the way believers are going to have to leave others behind. I named it “Out of Sodom.” Maybe I’ll come up with a name I like better.

I put it on Youtube, with a bunch of photos I hope are in the public domain.

I’m starting to feel like I’ll be able to write good music whenever I want. Things are breaking loose.

It’s so great to be able to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. God opens doors, redeems, and restores.

Follow the Pillar of Fire

I want to pass on a little advice. It’s a piece of knowledge that has been useful to me.

As many Christians know, the Bible is like the Constitution (or any other set of laws). It provides many benefits, but you won’t necessarily receive them unless you apply. It’s like the Fifth Amendment. The cops can’t question you after say you want an attorney, but if you don’t assert your right, they’ll question you anyway. There are many things God will do for you whether or not you ask, but on the whole, it’s best to make your needs known and stand on God’s promises.

Here’s a promise which is particularly useful: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” That’s Psalm 37, verses 23 and 24. It’s clearly a general promise available to all. It doesn’t say “a good Jewish man” or “a good man who sacrifices at the temple” or “a good man with freckles.”

Lately, I’ve been bringing this promise up in prayer, more than once a day. I ask God to honor it until the next time I ask. I believe prayer is like manna in that you shouldn’t rely on yesterday’s ration, so I think it’s important to ask repeatedly and not to expect the prayer to keep you going for the rest of your life. There are some things you only have to ask for once, or which you can stop asking for, once God confirms he will do what you want, but it pays not to take chances.

I remind him of similar promises. The Bible says that when your father and mother forsake you, the Lord will take you up. It says you will hear his voice behind you, telling you which way to turn. It says he will lead you in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

I also ask God to lead my enemies onto the points of their own swords and to hold them there until they repent.

What I’ve found is that when I make this request, things go better. There is less dead time in the day. I get things done. I spend less time goofing off or wandering in confusion. Life is more organized. There is less stress.

This prayer got me over the hump with CAD software. As I wrote earlier, I’m finally able to use it. And it has also led to greater musical productivity. I’m getting all sorts of good melodies written down. I really think I’m going to get to the point where I’ll be selling music. It’s going to be good enough to publish. That’s amazing. Music can be extremely lucrative. You only need one successful work to keep you fed and clothed when you’re retired.

I suggest you try asking God for guidance, daily. See what happens.

I’m very excited about music, because I’ve come to realize that writing music requires the same gift as cooking. It’s really no different. When you write recipes, it comes from inspiration. You’ll be sitting around thinking about other things, and suddenly you’ll imagine a flavor or a texture, and the way to create it, and you’ll write it down and try it. Your imagination tells you what will taste good, and your work only serves to confirm it. When you write music, melodies that “taste good” to the ear come into your mind, and all you have to do is write them in musical notation. If it sounds good, it IS good. That’s the only test.

I find that God is as willing to give me tunes as he is recipes. And here’s one great thing about music: you don’t have to make a mess in order to create it. You don’t have to drive to the store and buy food. You don’t have to wreck the kitchen. And when it’s done, you can preserve it forever, and you can email it and publish it with very little effort.

I don’t know how I would go about finding a market for music, but I’m sure there’s a way. When I have a portfolio built up, I should be able to do something with it.

I consider myself a writer and a creator of music. I think those are the things I should focus on. The other stuff is great, but I believe it deserves less priority. No one will ever pay me to run a lathe, and no one will ever draw closer to God while listening to me make a pizza.

I’ll put up the piece I’m working on now. I was shooting for something resembing a spiritual, but it has more of a classical sound. I love classical music. There’s no reason why I can’t enjoy writing it. I know it’s not fashionable, and composers are expected to come up with inventive new forms of music no one can stand to listen to, but only a moron would say the genre is exhausted. There is a lot of classical music, but only some of it is truly great. There is still a big need to fill. I’m always frustrated because my favorite composers (Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Beethoven) didn’t leave more work, and I’m sure other people feel the same way.

Chopin actually had some of his works burned when he died. Unbelievable.

This piece isn’t done. It’s very short, and there are lots of things I may want to do with it. But it does show that things are going well.

12 31 E Minor Piece

Get connected to the power supply and see what God will do for you. I think he is leading a lot of people out of the spiritual dark ages.

Observations From the Life of a Runaway Slave

More stuff is breaking loose in my life.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be able to use tools. I wanted to be able to fix things and make things. A few years ago, I started making it happen. I got a table saw, milling machine, lathe, welder, and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously, but it seemed like I was being restrained. I was never able to make myself come to terms with CAD software, and there were essential things I chose not to buy, because I was cheap.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve returned to the workshop. I’ve spent some money; a low four-figure sum. I picked up a few little things that made things much, much easier, and plans I had put on the back burner are beginning to come to fruition.

I also got started with CAD. Og and other Internet friends gave me advice about this a few years back, and I tried a few things, but I got nowhere. It was very frustrating. I’m not going to say what my IQ is, but it’s sufficiently high that you would think mastering a piece of software would not be beyond me, and I was completely confused. I could have fixed the problem by spending tons of money on training, but I already felt a little queasy about the money I had spent on tools.

A few weeks back, I started looking at the programs again. Og had recommended Allycad and Alibre Design, and I looked into other things, like Turbocad, Autocad, and Draftsight. I wanted 3D, because I don’t need the aggravation of trying to picture a pile of 2D drawings as an assembled machine, so I ruled out simple, free programs.

I signed up (again) for a free Alibre trial, and once again, I was utterly flummoxed. I could barely draw a line. If you ever want to fully grasp the meaning of the word “counterintuitive,” try this software, or any CAD software. Alibre publishes a book of step-by-step exercises, and I downloaded a few pages, but it turned out the book is completely obsolete. It goes with a user interface which bears little resemblance to the current version and is currently unobtainable. I was going to give up and get Turbocad, plus training, but then I found the Youtube video that appears below.

That guy does everything wrong. Anyone who produces training videos knows that you go step-by-step, and you include every detail. He doesn’t do that. He flies, and he leaves things out. And it WORKS. Watching the video, I managed to draw an oddly-shaped tub with chamfered edges.

That was a breakthrough. Using what I had learned, I was able to go through the first three exercises in the Alibre book. I managed to translate the old interface into the new. Here’s a useless and unrealistic part I created (but did not design).

I say it’s useless because you can’t really attach the flat piece to the handle and axle that way. If it’s a press fit, the thickness of the metal can’t go to zero around the inserted portion of the metal, and there is also nothing there to allow a real-world weld. But that doesn’t matter. I drew it successfully, so now I have a foothold in the world of CAD. I’m ordering the rest of the design book. And I bought the program, which, “coincidentally,” was on sale for 50% off this week.

This may seem unimportant, but it’s a huge leap. The actual work you do when you make things is of trivial importance. What really matters is the design. Most of the act of creation is mental. The actual cutting and welding…that’s just housekeeping. I would rather design a thousand parts and make one than make a thousand and design one. If I can use CAD, I can exercise my creativity, and I can keep the results forever.

You can do all sorts of stuff with CAD. I don’t know much about it, but my impression is that you can send designs by email, print them, use them in patent and product submissions, have parts made from them, and even send them to machines that crank the parts out for you. Compared to anything that existed thirty years ago, that is godlike power.

So I’m happy about that. And I’m getting interested in 3D printers. They make actual parts from sturdy plastic, at a cost which is not prohibitive for a hobbyist. My gut tells me that as the technology advances, ordinary CNC may go the way of manual machining. Who knows what they’ll be able to do with lasers and plasma in the future? Today it’s plastic. Tomorrow, you may be able to cut metal on a printer, in your own house. And prices are dropping. In ten years, everyone will have a 3D printer, or they’ll have them at Home Depot, to be engaged at affordable prices.

This is exciting. It gives individuals a level of control they’ve never had before. Democrats are already wetting their pants over it, because it will make home gun manufacturing easier. There isn’t one thing they can do to stop it. They can pass laws, but we all know how well gun control laws work. And the First Amendment will guarantee that people will be able to pass designs around.

Sooner or later, technology is going to make us so powerful that Democrats are going to have to give up on controlling the means and look toward improving the man. And only God can do that.

I am not interested in printing guns, but the possibility shows how powerful the new technology will be. The printing principal is packed with potential. It provides mankind with a type of leverage that rivals the mental augmentation of computers. In fact, it’s the reason computers exist. If we couldn’t print circuits, the PC would be impossible.

So the CAD thing is good news.

Here’s another thing: I’m getting more original music. I used to have a constant flow of variations on existing tunes, but I wasn’t really able to write original music. Common sense told me the same gift had to be the source of both types of music, but it wasn’t happening for me. Lately, that has changed. I get original tunes more and more often. I got several over the last few days, and they’re not bad. Composition is like cooking with sound, so if you know what tastes good to the ear, you should be able to write good music. I’m going to write some worthwhile stuff, if God stays with me.

I used to be bummed out because I didn’t receive original tunes. Now I realize there’s a new danger. Soon I’m going to receive more tunes than I can finish. What do I do then? I keep reminding myself that it’s better to waste than to want.

It’s wonderful to be able to budget and economize, but truthfully, I don’t think that’s what God intended for us. I think he wanted us to live in such abundance that things would serve us, instead of lack that requires us to serve things. If you have too much, you can focus on what you’re doing. If you have too little, you have to focus on getting more. You shouldn’t serve the dollar; the dollar should serve you. I would rather have more than I need and have to give things away or even throw them out than not have enough. It’s better to receive a hundred tunes and write three than to receive and write one.

Here’s a hard thing to accept: God is not against waste. Or at least, he reckons waste differently than we do. That’s my opinion, based on my observations. Consider the loaves and fishes. Did God pass out just enough? No, he gave the people so much, they had baskets of scraps left over. Consider Solomon. God gave him so much, he really didn’t know what to do with it. Consider the way America used to be blessed. We fed the world, and then we let crops rot, because we had no place to put them. God told the Jews not to harvest every square foot they planted. They were ordered to leave crops untouched, in case the poor wanted them. What we call “waste” is a symptom of abundance.

This principle is found over and over in the Bible. We are told that he who waters will be watered. We’re told that being stingy will make us poor. We’re told that when we’re asked to carry something one mile, we carry it two. God ordered the Jews to give up about 14% of every work week, plus holidays, in times that were very, very hard, when every penny counted. I believe we’re supposed to have and give more than we need. Otherwise, there will always be gaps that aren’t filled.

I don’t think God wants me to work hard. I think he wants me to have ample time to pray and minister every day. I believe that every hour I spend in prayer saves me hours of work, just as the sabbath made the Jews more successful. And I think God is going to give me many more tunes than I can complete. I am an heir, and this is how heirs live. Our cups run over, our yokes are easy, and our burdens are light. Or God is a liar.

I think excessive devotion to work is a Satanic notion. It seems very natural to expect people to earn things. The problem with that is that God wants to give us things that are greater than what we can earn. I believe we limit him when we insist on earning.

Think of the beggar the disciples healed. They didn’t ask him to do their laundry or make a pilgrimage on his belly. They touched him and healed him, for nothing, and he got the use of his legs back. If he had had to earn that, he would have stayed on the ground for the rest of his life.

A while back, some Obama underling told the press the Bible said, “God helps those who help themselves.” Clearly, this person was not familiar with the Bible. The Bible does not say that. It says you shouldn’t be lazy. But it doesn’t say blessings come primarily by, or with the prerequisite of, great effort. Not unless you’re cursed.

Adam didn’t earn the title to the earth or his life of ease in Eden. Noah didn’t earn preservation in the Ark. Lot didn’t earn his angelic rescue. Samson didn’t earn his strength. Gideon didn’t earn his improbable victory. These examples are shown to us to make us understand that faith, submission, and humility are what bring us blessings and power.

Offhand, I can only think of one person in the Bible who thought he had earned his blessings, and that person was Job. And God set him straight, but good.

Satan wants us to think we have to earn things. With this lie, he gets us to devote way too much time to work and way too little time to prayer. And then we don’t get what he promises. For example, you may get rich, but your family may be messed up because you weren’t around to pray for them and teach them.

Prayer is job one. I’m sure of it. Quite literally, prayer is an investment. It is the seed God gives the sower, and in your season, you will get the harvest.

I feel much freer than I did before. I feel like the restraints are being removed. In ignorance, I buried myself in curses, but God is washing me clean and killing their effects.

Spend time praying in tongues every day. Try to make it add up to at least an hour. And pray for God to guide your steps, leading you to the experiences you need to have. Good things will happen. It may take time, as a tree takes time to bear fruit, but it will happen.

Marvel at my Video Skills

Here is the more-or-less final version of my second original composition. I decided to name it New Dawn, after my church, and after what I think God is up to in the world. I had to use Youtube. Couldn’t figure out any other way to put in on Facebook. Hope you like it.

Psalms 37:4
Zechariah 4:6

They had it Coming

My former church has finally gone completely insane.

Today they welcomed Kim Kardashian. Yes, the Kim Kardashian who poses nude. The sex-tape Kim Kardashian. I don’t know if they took her into the green room so she could bless the pastors with her wisdom, but she tweeted about her presence at church, and they proudly re-tweeted it.

People are saying it’s wonderful that she went to church. Uh…no, it’s NOT wonderful. Not unless she repented. Churches are supposed to welcome REPENTANT sinners. The other kind screw churches up.

Think of it as an immigration problem. Say you live in a Christian nation, and Muslims start showing up. When there are 50 of them, it’s no big deal. When they’re 50% of the population…big deal. You’re going to have Sharia law, honor killings, an end to the pork industry, lots of terrorism…it will be bad. When sinners come to a church and don’t change their ways, and their numbers get too high, they convert the church. Not that this would be a big change for Trinity. It’s barely a church as it is.

I was furious when I heard about this. It’s bad enough that the pastor sucked up to R. Kelly, who narrowly avoided conviction on a statutory rape beef with video evidence. Do they really need to use Kim Kardashian to prove they’ve made it?

The name “Kardashian” used to be associated with top-notch legal representation. Those days are gone. Now it connotes promiscuity, nudity, stupidity, and shallowness. As the good book would put it, it has “become a proverb.” Why would any pastor be proud this person came to his church? Only a desperate self-promotor or a feckless infant could think this was a good thing.

It would be wonderful if Miss Kardashian went to a church and told everyone she regretted all the dumb things she had done. I’d be the first to welcome her. Well, actually, I think a woman should do that, just to be safe. But I would be all for it. But for her to roll in and out with no evidence of change…how is that a victory for anyone?

I really blew up about this on Facebook. The gloves are off. I said the leaders of the church clearly did not know the Bible, and I posted a long series of verses about respecting persons. The pastors are like children. It’s as though they had never heard of the Bible. This stuff is obvious to teenagers who read the word, but these adults don’t have a clue. Or they just don’t care, which is looking pretty likely.

Some lady tried to “correct” me, saying I should not “touch” God’s “anointed.” That’s sad. Preachers have succeeded in brainwashing many Christians, so they will cover up their pastors’ backslidden behinds. They say all sorts of curses fall on those who speak up. But God didn’t curse Jesus, Paul, Isaiah, Micaiah, Malachi, Peter, Jude, Jeremiah, Samuel, Nathan, or any of the other Biblical figures (or if you’re Catholic, figurines) who spoke up. If you took the negative remarks out of the Bible, the remaining text would be a pamphlet.

She said I should only correct people privately. But she said that publicly, which is a little hard to explain.

As Perry Stone teaches, there is a difference between “anointing” and “gift.” A person who is anointed has God’s authority to do some job or other. He has God’s approval. Anointing is not always permanent. God anointed Saul, and he took the anointing away. A gift is a natural or supernatural ability. It may persist when the anointing leaves. This is why truly foul preachers sometimes continue to function in their gifts. It helps explain why some very bad churches stay very big for quite some time.

Anyway, a preacher who teaches false tradition and serves his belly is not acting under an anointing. Not in my book. And because they commit their sins publicly, it only makes sense to correct them publicly. Besides, the leaders of Trinity Church know exactly what they’re doing wrong. People have spoken up. They just don’t care.

God is not going to stand up and give me leprosy for criticizing people who milk the poor and lie to them. If he did things like that, John the Baptist would have exploded. Repeatedly.

Quite honestly, I think these people are idiots. I have tried to show restraint. I’ve said I disagreed with them. I’ve said they were off the path. But after a time, you have to start using terms like “idiot.” Even Jesus did it. After a certain point, mildly critical language just doesn’t do the job. If you speak about foolish people too respectfully, there is a danger that other people will not understand just how foolish they are. “I’m going to try Trinity Church.” “DON’T!” “Why not?” “They’re…missing the mark.” “Well, I’ll just check it out.” “THEY’RE IDIOTS! THEY’RE IDIOTS! DANGER! DANGER!”

I think God takes a similar approach. He starts by sending you little hints. Then he sends people to correct you. Then he might let you get a physical illness. He might let you suffer defeat. Eventually, if you keep pushing it, he buries you in burning sulfur and pitch. Or he sends you to hell.

I wish I had never heard about this. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life reflecting on the stupid behavior of a group of carnal ministers. But there it is. And I don’t investigate this stuff. People bring it to me.

How about some positive news? Today Apostle Michael Tomasulo visited my church. My denomination, or whatever it is, is big on apostles. They seem like the real thing. They have shown up and said some very solid, very impressive things. Mr. Tomasulo is one of them.

I met him on his last visit. He’s an EE (electrical engineer). I was building guitar amps at the time, so I was really glad to meet him. I have a lot of weird interests, so it’s always comforting to meet someone who can relate. When I meet a person who shares one of my interests, it’s like meeting someone from home. Which is odd. And I can’t combine all, or even most, of my interests in one friend. I have to have an assortment. The gun friend. The cooking friend. The physics friend. The law friend. And so on.

Today he lit into TBN (he can’t stand watching it) and megachurches that teach self-help and motivational gibberish. LIKE TRINITY. He said exactly what I was saying to my prayer group three years ago. I said we didn’t need Dr. Phil and Oprah. I said motivational speakers were not what God wanted for us. He said these things today, even referring to Dr. Phil and his mothership. I saw a preacher on TBN say the same things last year (no word on whether his body has been found). God tells all of his people the same things. The church is unified, as Jesus prayed it would be. It’s just scattered. Like golden tickets in a pile of worldly Wonka bars.

Before he spoke, and before I knew what he would talk about, I put this on Facebook: “At my old church we had great motivational speakers who promised God would make us rich if we gave them money. Here at New Dawn Ministries, we have to settle for prophecy.”

Lately I’ve been getting back into tools, and I’ve started watching engineering lectures. Engineers don’t know where formulas come from. Physicists do, but they don’t know what to do with them, so I’m hoping to bridge the gap a little. I’ve been watching EE and ME stuff from NPTEL (Indian universities) and other sources. Today I decided to ask Mr. Tomasulo a few things, to see if he could steer me in the right direction. So far I’ve learned how much a truss can hold when the beams have been tempered in a tandoor.

Lo and behold, it turned out he wanted to talk to me. He remembered that I had been building tube amps. We started talking. I kept trying to tell him how much I admired engineers for knowing how to do USEFUL things, and he kept trying to tell me how much he admired physicists for knowing the root causes of stuff. Anyway, it turned out he was considering supplementing his income with EE work, and we started talking about amps. I told him it might be possible to generate some money building amps, and now he wants to come check out what I’m doing. Even if it goes nowhere, now I’ll have a friend who is almost a physicist. An EE is really not that far off. They are not the dumb engineers. What they do takes brains. They don’t seem to realize that, though.

An EE is actually more useful to me than a physicist, because a physicist wouldn’t know anything new.

We talked for quite a while, and unfortunately, his wife was standing right next to him, and she was bored so severely she required medical attention.

So here is what happened today. As a former physicist and amp builder who was recently told he had the anointing of a prophet and teacher, I met a guitar-playing EE apostle who wants to build tube amps. Tell me that’s not a weird day.

I want to introduce this guy to my dad as “Apostle Mike,” and I’ll insist he call him that. Come on. That’s irresistible. “Glad to know you, Mike.” “APOSTLE Mike, Dad.” “Uh…”

“Dad, I’m going to Five Guys with Apostle Mike. Do you want anything?”

I guess I’m stupid. That cracks me up.

But hey, it’s what he is.

I think if I could pick a job, it would be prophet. Apostles have to travel. Prophets can hang out in their garages and mess with tools most of the time, and every so often, they pop out, go to the local church, and say something that scares the living daylights out of everyone. Then they go home, and people leave them alone. It’s like Punxsutawney Phil, only holy.

“An earthquake is going to destroy the city next week, and afterward, an omer of organic dove’s dung from Whole Foods will cost as much as an Ipad 2. Plus God is going to give Deacon Fred a withered foot for playing Powerball. See you later, and stay off my lawn!”

I’m not positive my expectations are totally realistic. But it’s my understanding that a prophet can command a she-bear to eat punks that get on his nerves. That could be really handy.

I Must be a MIDIanite

Crazy stuff is happening. A few years back, I got myself a grand piano and learned to play it, but I gave up because I couldn’t remember things I learned. Recently, I’ve started playing again.

I started taking guitar lessons a few months ago, and gradually, the emphasis switched from learning guitar to learning composition. First thing I knew, I was using Finale every day, and I found I preferred composing for the keyboard. Once that happened, I needed a MIDI keyboard to help me, so I bought a little-bitty one, and for reasons too dull to go into, I also set up a cheesy Casio keyboard beside my chair.

Now I have a couple of pieces written, and I find that to really understand and sharpen them, I need to play them. So in fits and starts, I’ve started sitting down at the grand piano.

It’s really something, playing a piece I wrote. One of my character quirks is that it’s harder for me to get interested in other people’s creative ideas (even Chopin’s) than my own, so now that I’m studying my own compositions, I feel much more connected to what I’m doing.

I got rid of my digital piano several years ago. It’s pretty clear that was a mistake. I’m going to need another one eventually. I may even have to get rid of my beer fridge so I’ll have room. Today I looked at prices, hoping they had gone down. They have, if you take inflation into account. But not enough to matter. ARRGH.

I guess it’s okay, though. I’m sure the piano I got rid of is inferior to the ones they sell now.

It makes me nervous to consider the possibility that I might be able to do really well at something new. I don’t want to put up a lot of crap theorizing about my potential and then find out I’m wrong. But I keep comparing my musical ideas to those of successful composers, and I am pleasantly surprised. I have a lot to learn, and in some ways, I’m restricted to pretty simple ideas, but I think I have the main thing I need, which is an inner voice that gives me good original music.

I don’t know what to think about this. If things keep going this well, there’s no reason why I won’t find myself generating a sizable body of useful music.

God guides and restores. The more you give yourself to him and get to know him, the more he repairs you and squeezes the most out of your remaining potential. You can’t expect it to happen if you live for yourself and have no prayer life, but if you persist in pressing into his kingdom, remarkable things will happen. I believe God has set his seal on certain promises he has made me, and based on the progress I’ve seen, it looks like I’m right. It’s a little scary, but I can’t deny it.

I don’t understand why the music I write is so different from what I expected to write. I thought I’d be coming up with religious music with a lot of soul, but so far, it’s all classical-influenced pop. I don’t mean it can’t be used for religious purposes, but it seems to be in the same broad class of music as things like Classical Gas.

I suppose one reason things are going this way is that it’s very hard to get a computer to swing or shuffle. Maybe I drifted toward whiter music because I’m not ready to cope with beating soul out of a CPU.

I’ll keep posting stuff as I write it.

Throw a Dollar in my Guitar Case

I’ve been fiddling with the new tune I wrote. When I wrote it, I chose to make it a little repetitious, because I thought people would want to hear the hooks more than once, but it was sounding a little too monotonous, so I messed with it. I added some cello to the introduction. I like it, but it sounds a little dissonant. I think the piano samples Finale used may be slightly flat!

Anyway, here it is.

Viola da Gamba Am Noodling 10 28 12 with 11 11 changes