CALL for SUBMISSIONS!!!
ALL artists! I am very, VERY happy to announce that IMPROVIJAZZATION NATION is ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS again. I have been granted a (possibly long-term) stay of execution for my trip to Iraq. I will still be traveling all over the U.S., so new issues may be a little less timely, but (as always), we will review your materials as soon as possible after we receive them. Look at the guidelines for submission below, please:
MUSIC: All formats accepted. Snail mail to: Zzaj Productions, c/o Dick Metcalf, 5308 65th Avenue, Lacey, WA 98513 The only criteria for music you submit is that it MUST HAVE high performance energy... if you submit lacklustre material, it will be reviewed accordingly
POETRY: Poems are accepted for publication ONLY via e-mail. Poems submitted in any other fashion will NOT be published. Poetry that includes some reference to music is granted first priority for publication.
BOOKS: We will review some books; books about music are PREFERRED. We will NOT return any books submitted for review. Snail them to the address listed above for MUSIC.
DIY Announcements: We will post your (e-mailed) ad about DIY projects, regardless of genre or medium... HOWEVER, this is ONLY for INDEPENDENTS... if you are a corporation, don't even BOTHER sending stuff... it will be marked and reported as SPAM!
Improvijazzation Nation - Issue # 74
INTERVIEW with Tom Furgas
Zzaj: I
like to start off these interviews with a little “personal insight”… so please
give us a little history about yourself…. where you grew up, where you live now…
how old you are, your day job (if any), & other interests you (may) have besides
music… kind of a “bio”, if you will!
Tom Furgas: I was born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1954, and I currently reside in
Austintown, Ohio, only a 20-minute drive from the old neighborhood on the west
side. I started my love of music in kindergarten, when Mrs. Loag would play
songs on the piano that we children would sing along with. So my interest was so
keen that my parents obliged me with piano lessons, which I continued until the
sixth grade. I studied music in high school, and had a bit of training in
college as well, at the Dana School of Music in 1973. I decided, though, that I
didn't want to try to make a living as a musician, since I wouldn't have been
able to do it they way I wanted to and make a living at it. So, in a sense like
Ives, I got a "day job" to support myself while I continued to work at my music
in my own way and in my own time. I have worked at various retail-sector jobs,
never making very much money...but then I never really needed to make great
money since I have never had any interest in raising a family which is of course
a large financial undertaking. I currently work the night shift at a Major
Retail Establishment doing building and equipment maintenance.
Zzaj: You/I have been with the “tape underground” for some MANY years now;
how/why did you get started with home recording?
Tom Furgas: My main desire was to hear my own music, since finding others to
perform and record it has always been out of the question, it seems. I started
composing in an avant-garde "classical" idiom but have since progressed to a
kind of progressive/avant-garde pop-rock-classical hybrid style, with strong
elements of "classical" avant-garde (i.e., in the tradition of "classical"
composers, leading up to Webern, then Varese, Stockhausen, Carter, Xenakis,
Cage, etc. etc.) I began home taping by the most primitive means imaginable;
overdubbing by bouncing and re-recording tracks between two tape decks...very
primitive and the early tapes are just horrible to listen to. But I evolved with
better equipment over time. I played various electronic keyboards including a
fine old ARP monophonic synthesizer, some Casio keyboards, an old electric bass,
drum machines, and anything I could borrow.
Zzaj: A “standard” question on Soundclick is “How does the Internet affect
your music?” Expand that a bit, & tell us how accessibility to the net, as well
as improved gear, has affected your (own) music, please.
Tom Furgas: Well, I currently don't go in for MP3's and such as yet, since my
home computer is a very primitive laptop with a terribly slow processor, but my
good friend Ken Clinger has made a number of tracks of ours (mostly pieces that
I've composed which he has done realizations of) available as MP3 files on
Soundclick. Mostly, having the Internet means access to e-mail and thus instant
communication with a number of like-minded musicians, so we can set up
collaborations and/or trades. This has been the area of largest impact on my own
activities so far. As for improved gear, well, home-recording has now gone
digital in a big way (i.e. it's now easily affordable to almost everyone) so the
quality of the recordings are on par with the professional studios. As almost
all of my recordings are direct digital recordings from keyboards or other
equipment to the CD burner, there is no loss of sound quality and it's about as
close to perfect as can be. I am not a fetishist about audiophile quality, I
just want my recordings to sound the best they can, so that the music comes
through without the defects of an imperfect recording medium.
Zzaj: Who (out of the original crew of home recordists) do you play with most
these days? Are there any “new” folks you’ve discovered (as a result of the new
technology, perhaps) that you play with now?
Tom Furgas: Mostly I still hang with my old favorites from the '80's such as Don
Campau, Ken Clinger, Zan Hoffman, and many others. But I recently did a fine
collaboration, our first, with Russ Stedman, and there is another collaboration
in the works with the superb improvisor Eric Wallach. On the whole although I
have the potential to have tons more contacts I am limited by my time and
cash-flow to trading with mostly just the dozen or so musicians whom I have
known for over 20 years now. I wish I could expand it, but at this time my time
and money don't allow it.
Zzaj: One of the tenets in the old “tape days” was that “home taping will
kill the music industry”… though it didn’t do that, have the advances in
technology helped to “re-shape” the industry, or is it still one big
“snake-pit”? Or, is that really important?
Tom Furgas: The music business is just that, a business, and as such the most
important factor is the bottom line, the profits gained from moving so many
units of merchandise. It might as well be boxes of detergent for all the
businessmen in the business care (except perhaps that they like having access to
the drugs and groupies, etc.) Home taping (nowadays, more like "home disking" I
guess) has nothing to do with that...it's essentially electronic "folk music";
music of the people, by the people, for the people. The music industry, as has
been seen of late, is starting to come unravelled, though...thanks to the
Internet and advances in home-recording, but from those musicians who wish to
create and market their music as a source of income. Those of us "amateurs"
(i.e. those who do it for the "love" of it) don't have much effect on the
situation on that score, but that's OK...that's not what this music-making is
about. We don't persue it as a means of earning a living simply because our
audience is naturally too small to permit that. Not because of the "quality" of
the music, but because there are not enough listeners to financially support it.
Zzaj: How has the “new gear” influenced your own studio? Have you gone more &
more “digital”, or do you still run analog tape first, then digitize?
Tom Furgas: Right now I have several electronic keyboards, as well as a "groovebox",
a kind of advanced drum machine, and these are recorded directly to digital
recording on a Tascam CD burner. Using the sequencer of one keyboard, and the
multi-tracking of the groovebox, I am able to have multi-tracked compositions
without recording them to analog tape first. Any other elements such as sounds
or voices I can mix in "on the fly" as well. I have an analog tape 4-track that
my good friend Bill Lehman has given me, but it doesn't factor in what I am
doing just now. But I will be using that at some point, so I will still have an
opening for analog tape in my arsenal. But by going direct from the tape to the
CD burner it will still probably sound almost 100% perfect as my current setup
does.
Zzaj: Were you musically “trained”, or did you pick up the music pretty much
by ear? On that note, how important do you think formal training is to the
quality a musician is able to display?
Tom Furgas: I've had piano lessons, and some training in composition and harmony
in high school and college, but mostly I am self-taught just by picking up books
on music theory and applying those lessons to my own work, or breaking those
rules as the case may be. For many of my own recordings I don't compose on paper
but "compose" by playing and recording, doing retakes for rethoughts rather than
using an eraser on music paper. The kind of formal training a musician has
should be determined by what that musician wants to do. In some cases formal
training can be a greater hinderance than a help. Some musicians will be exposed
to conventional theory, harmony, etc, and find themselves straitjacketed by it.
Some who never have formal training will find themselves limited by the lack of
it, and not know it. So it varies, I think, with the individual. I think a bit
of education regarding music HISTORY is important; one should know how we
arrived at the current situation, so as to know which paths one may follow, or
create, fruitfully.
Zzaj: How do you approach the artwork for a project? Do you try & do your
covers/tray inserts/etc., all by yourself, or do you use the Internet to aid you
in the design? Do you think the artwork for a tape or CD is as important (or
nearly) as the music itself?
Tom Furgas: I make my own CD sleeves using a photo program on the computer,
currently the MGI PHoto Suite program. I have also tried Adobe Photoshop, but
not with my current computer. I have a pretty standardized format for my
sleeves, usually with the titles and credits for the CD laid out on the front,
the text centered (rather than having left or right margins), and then inside
the jewel-case (I only use "slimline" cases) a photo or piece of artwork. Some
discs have an artwork on the front and the titles/credits inside. I have
downloaded images from the internet when I wanted a particular image for a given
CD cover, but just as often I might create an abstract image using the Photo
Suite program, or I'll just put the artist-title listing on the front and the
titles-credits inside. Generally a pretty simple setup...just to put the
imformation out there in an easily readable format. I like to experiment with
typefonts and layouts, but they generally adhere to a standardized format. I do
feel that a good CD design is important, but not as important as the music
itself...it should be there to provide information which will enhance the
listeners experience. I am in agreement with Martin Davidson of Emanem Records,
who feels that clarity of information is the most important aspect of CD design.
Zzaj: From researching the net, it looks like you (too) have done quite a bit
of work with folks (poets) like John M. Bennett; I personally believe that the
marriage of music and words is very, VERY important… what are your thoughts
about that?
Tom Furgas: I used to have a band with Bill Lehman, we were Courtesy Patrol, and
at the time (1984-1996) I felt that I did have important things to say with song
lyrics, or felt that Bill's, or other contributors, lyrics had important,
poetic, meaningful things to express and that they should be combined with music
and expressed in that way. And I still like to occasionally incorporate found
voices in my recordings, but not as often as I once did. I do find that the
inclusion of words of any kind immediately push the music into the background;
suddenly the focus is on the message in the lyrics or poetry or found words or
what have you. Now, I have nothing against that, not at all! But for me,
currently, it is not a high priority; I prefer to keep the music in the
forefront of the experience. But that could change at any time, who knows? I may
want to start writing song lyrics again, and then I will certainly team up with
Bill (he'd do it at the drop of a hat) and continue in that vein.
Zzaj: Give the folks reading this your thoughts on “how to get started” in
music, please. What are the most important values one should have when starting
out? What (do you think) an artists’ “goals” should be for their music?
Tom Furgas: It's certainly easier than ever to get started in the home-taping
and trading field...the equipment and contacts are there to be used to any
extent one wishes. But in terms of starting in music itself...! Well, if one has
a vision, a sense of purpose, then one should persue it diligently and with
passion, and everything else will simply fall into place. Well, not
"simply"...it takes great commitment and dedication to bring it to full flower,
whatever one wants to master be it hair-metal guitar, writing rap lyrics,
programming a drum machine, or any means and methods of music making. I knew a
young man, many years ago, who swore off all partying, carousing, troublemaking
with his neighborhood friends and shut himself up in his parents basement with a
guitar and an amplifier and did nothing in his spare time (outside of school and
homework) but practice, practice, practice. No TV, no video games, no
distractions of ANY kind. He became an amazing and brilliant guitarist as a
result. Not sure if he is still persueing it as a profession but if he is I know
he is successful at it (although not famous...yet). Is that degree of commitment
necessary? Well, for HIM it was, and it paid off. For others, maybe not that
degree of commitment, but certainly one will become as skilled and focused as
one wants to be with the proper amount of dedication and hard work. It's a
matter of acting professionally, not simply dabbling in it and letting it drop
as soon as one encounters obstacles or challenges. A friend of J.S. Bach once
asked him for a simple keyboard piece, and Bach obliged him with a minuet. His
friend complained that it was too difficult for him, and Bach simply said "Only
practice it diligently, and it will go well."
RETURN to Zzaj Productions MAIN page!
