HearToLearn: "Phil, you have some great rhythm in how you sing. I love that! May I ask where that comes from? It's so interesting. It' just such a strong sense of where the beat is and playing with it."

Well thanks for that, I feel humbled.

I guess listening to music all my life. It was always going in the house growing up. Now, it was EZ Listening (like, before that meant Neil Diamond and Carly Simon ... back when it meant Percy Faith and the Ray Conniff Singers) ... that genre had a lot of great melodies, though.

We had moved from Southern California to the Midwest when I was 8 years old... same stuff. Big Band. Some classical. But when I was in 9th grade, I watched the Jan and Dean movie "Dead Man's Curve" and that sound woke up deep memories of Southern Ca and hearing that stuff ... not in our house, but around town. I started secretly listening to oldies shows, and within a couple of years there were oldies STATIONS ... and I listened to a LOT of Beatles and Beach Boys and Mamas & Papas ... and Herb Alpert and the Chiffons and Supremes ... and Pete Fountain. And Glenn Miller. And eventually I was listening to CSN and the Moody Blues before I was out of High School in ... 1982.

When StyxJourneyWagon was popular. I wasn't the most popular kid in school. :-)

I eventually learned to appreciate some StyxJourneyWagon.

Every time I moved in and after college, the last thing to come down at the old place and the first thing to go up in the new place was the stereo. Music, music, music. I've been steeped in it all my life.

I've ALWAYS wanted to make music. Never took any music lessons.
Oh, I had a recorder in "band" in 6th grade, but I could never get the hang of reading music. Didn't pick up a guitar until I was 37.

So I'll never be very good at it. Full time job, family, house to take care of... But I'm good enough at it to play chords and accompany myself, and now to write songs. And I go take non-music-reading guitar lessons with Lee Ruth every week and I have for 14 years (you'd think I'd be better than I am after that amount of time, but no. I know what I want but my fingers won't do it.)

Enter BIAB. Now I can.

I was a huge Alan Parsons Project fan in College. Long before I ever picked up a guitar and I had written off learning to play anything (and I never liked my voice, either, so I never considered myself a singer... BUT ...) I thought, "maybe I will be a producer".

Well reality took over and I got a job in IT. Which is a much surer career than "producer", especially if you have no musical training.

But my musical training was all in my ear, and I always have sung along with songs when nobody could hear me. I liked singing, I just didn't think I could do it very well, and didn't want anyone to hear me.

So you might say I had a lot of "secret" practice.

When I hear music that I like, I feel like a(n) electrical conductor. It just flows through me with no resistance (conversely, when I hear music I can't stand, there's high resistance and I feel tension). When it just flows through you it just kind of becomes a part of you, I guess.

That explanation was all over the map, but maybe you can read the answer between the lines.

Thanks for listening!

- P

Last edited by Phil Leith; 04/30/18 05:06 AM.
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