Behind the Editor’s Desk

Every few weeks, I receive a letter from another prison inmate requesting free Berklee Press books. These letters are always handwritten and polite. I have a folder of them.

I’ve tried several times to fulfill these requests, but there are complications, and I’ve found it inordinately complex (impossible, so far) to make it happen, much as I want to. Maybe, someone out there will have some ideas of organizations that can help me navigate this. I really don’t have the time or resources to make this happen, myself. I feel badly about saying no, though.

Consider, what better way can an inmate spend their time, besides making music? It not only relieves the tedium and the tension, but it develops a skill that can make the world a better place. Studying music in prison creates a diversion that might keep prison guards safer. Learning music is a forum for introspection and an exercise in self-control. A music book in a jail cell could put some light in a dark place. So, when a prisoner begs me for book about how to learn guitar, I want to make it happen. Even if he’s a murderer.

There are some complicating factors, though. For example, there are many rules governing what kinds of materials inmates can receive, and they vary by institution, and by state. Many prisons don’t permit CDs. At some institutions, only the librarian can request books. Other institutions don’t have libraries, and so different administrators are charged with such decisions. The bureaucracies tend to be Byzantine, figuring out the proper procedure for a given institution.

There are hurdles on the Berklee side, as well. Berklee College has a long list of people asking for free stuff from them, and others (rightfully, in my opinion) take precedence. Inner-city kids, for example, or musicians struggling in New Orleans. Wonderful Berklee efforts such as City Music provide incredible outreach and service to communities worldwide.

It’s no surprise or criticism that we take better care of  young musicians still struggling with the Katrina aftermath than in incarcerated murderers, pimps, drug dealers, etc.   There are so many opportunities to help more deserving constituencies that we never get to, it’s really not such a good allocation of limited resources to send prisoners free books.

Still, though, the prisoner requests keep coming to me.
As I see it, two things must happen in order to get inmates books.

1. Someone official at the institution must administer the request, not the inmate. This requires about five rounds of communication, judging from my past experience. Unfortunately, I don’t personally have the administrative capacity to undertake transforming inmate requests into institutional requests. Do you? Or do you know of an organization that does? A couple hours per request should do it. (Maybe less, once you get the hang of it, and develop some form letters.)

2. An entity other than Berklee College must pay for the book and administer the process. You, maybe?

Let me know if you have any thoughts about how to make this happen. I’m out of ideas (and time to think about it), myself.

Hell is looking for new graphics designers.

What I want doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable. I want a freelancer to design covers for our books. So, I placed an ad on Craigslist, very explicitly stating my needs.

Here’s my ad:

“Freelance graphic artists with specific expertise in book cover design are invited to send work samples to Berklee Press, the publishing division of Berklee College of Music. Looking for designer(s) who can give multiple concepts per topic and transform often crushing feedback into brilliant new designs. Must be patient, flexible, professional, and creative, providing a fresh look at contemporary music themes, with art that stands out against the competition and is a positive reflection of our brand. Please send a link to online samples of your work.”

Here’s what I get:

1. Tons of designers with no book cover experience.

2. Lots of illustrators, many of whom seem to want to draw comic books.

3. Lots of designers sending résumés but no work samples.

4. A very small number of graphic artists who have done a book cover or two, but the covers aren’t great. To put it kindly.

5. Several sent me broken links.

6. Several tried applying for full-time jobs with me.

Not one—NOT ONE—designer sent me a single image that had anything to do with music.

I’m not sure why everyone is wasting so much time, trying to respond when they are obviously not a good fit. I’d rather not get any responses than get inappropriate responses.

I once had a painter cold call me and say that he had a lot of portraits of famous musicians and that he wanted us to publish a book of them. I said that we didn’t do projects like that. Then he begged to come in and meet with me, just for an “informational interview” so that he could get practice showing publishers his work.

For some reason, I relented. He seemed like he needed some career guidance, I guess. What a mistake. So, he came over, and showed me his hideous portfolio. I said, “Thanks, but as I said, we’re not interested.” I tried to give him some insight into how a publisher’s decision-making process works—a sense of the financial realities of what he was asking us to do.

He left. But then he kept following up, sending me additional samples, clearly confident that I was on the verge of changing my mind.

I wasn’t! I really wasn’t! I never had any interest, and I was clear about that from the beginning! He just wasn’t listening. Aaaaaahhh!

The way to get me, a publisher, to say yes to something is to try to anticipate my needs and then position yourself as a solution to my problems. Don’t send me pastel drawings of your cat. Read my ad, maybe look at my Web site to investigate our existing covers, and then send me what I’m requesting.

Is that rocket science?

I’m just astonished at how outrageously inappropriate all the designers who responded to my ad are, and I reiterate my question, “Why are you wasting both of our time?”

Now, I have to write fifty or so rejections. I so hate sending rejections. It’s an acknowledgment that we’ve reached a dead end, of shattered hope, and of failed communication.

Dude, even though I’m telling you to get lost, know this: you might have talent and promise. You might have a wondrous soul—beautifully tortured and worthy of expression. I’m truly sorry that you are starving in a garret. But what you’re doing to me, sending me on a wild goose chase to your Web site with broken links and off-base scribblings, is flat out rude. Consider my note a rejection of your ill-conceived business practices, and get a clue! You’re life will get easier when you learn this lesson.

Secrecy and pretense have been a part of music education since at least the Middle Ages. Cliques have had their own notation. Masters have been reluctant to share their techniques for fear that they would lose their competitive edge. Textbooks were written in an overwrought, highfalutin academic style, perhaps to create a sense of awe and mystique around the author. But that doesn’t do the reader/student much good. I hope that we’re growing out of that now, in this age of sharing information.

You’ll see this if you compare several works discussing the same subject matter. At NEC, we had a seminar devoted to this. We looked a counterpoint and harmony books by Schoenberg, Piston, and some others, and compared their styles. Some were clear and helpful. Others were as dense as mortgage documents. But the ideas were the same. A fugue is a fugue. Why then, not compete for the clearest explanation? The reality of what’s published is far from that.

In my editing, I find that some authors put a lot of effort into putting on such airs and trappings of academia. This is especially common in two groups: highly educated musicians born before about 1950 and people who grew up very poor, in rough or highly rural neighborhoods with poor schools. The result is long rambling sentences, awkward and esoteric words, and a condescending affect.

Yuck. Clarity is so much more helpful to the reader.

So, the laborious process goes, of profound, deep editing. When editing gets severe, an unfortunate consequence can be that the writer’s personality can get lost. This is a danger with all writing that is very far from the mark of what’s appropriate or helpful for the reader. The life gets edited out of it. The baby goes out with the bath water, and it can be tough work getting it back in.

Which brings me to the Westminster dog show. Congratulations to Uno the beagle and all those who played a part in awarding him his Best in Show victory on February 11, 2008. As I am part of a two-beagle household, with my beagle in-law making three, this is big news around here, and I will confess to probably spending too much time reading about this grand event. A beagle hasn’t won Best in Show before.

Particularly of note are some of the details regarding Uno’s performance. Not only was he considered the noisiest in show, but he also reportedly nibbled on a brand new sign and nipped a microphone during an interview. This is important news: it means that he is a proper beagle, not some over-groomed robot dog, bred for chasing ribbons rather than rabbits. Uno is a dog’s dog. I will tell you from experience: real beagles destroy furniture and toys, bark and howl, and lick even clean dishes in the dishwasher. They are like Uno.

Uno had a good bath, and likely a pedicure, and was on his best behavior for the show. But he was still Uno the beagle. The result was that the crowd gave him an uncharacteristically enthusiastic standing ovation. Despite being on his best behavior, he was still himself. That’s what won the day. He was the perfect dog. And he was still a beagle.

As writers and editors, let’s take note. There are many ways to present concepts. Truth and clarity are our ideals. But the human element—in Uno’s case, the “beagle factor”—that makes it unique and fosters an emotional tie with the reader.

I am reminded of a project by a highly beloved educator, who was just a terrible writer. In his first draft, he came across as condescending and rambling, and inclined towards useless information, redundancy, and digressions. It was such an obnoxious first proof.

After four years editing his project, which included two different editors who eventually gave up in disgust, the project landed on my desk, and I had the directive to either save it or kill it. I had seen the first draft and knew how it started. Then, I read the latest edited version, and saw that it had become a lifeless lump. It was utterly without any beagle factor left. Mostly inoffensive, but b-o-r-i-n-g. And it was about two hundred pages too long.

I met with the author and found him to be extremely charismatic and engaging, in person. He was also really, really smart, and kind, and seemed to care that I understood the concepts he was explaining to me. And he was sooooo funny! If he was a dog, he’d be a beagle, and his overly edited manuscript was a pale reflection of himself. Who knows why his writing was so off, but the editing mostly moved it sideways, rather than up. The grammar was cleaned up, and the offensive bits were removed. But, well, yuck again.

Here’s how we saved it.

I went through the book, chapter by chapter, and came up with lists of questions about the content. When there was a concept missing, I formed a question to generate the right answer about it. When something was boring, I’d ask for an example. When something was condescending, I’d ask him to explain it again. He was so fed up with the project at that point that he didn’t really remember much about what was in the manuscript and what was not.

Rather than asking him to write again, I interviewed him, doing a one-hour session per chapter, based on my lists of questions.

In these interviews, he was his usual charming self. He told jokes and stories, he used time-tested teaching strategies to explain difficult theoretical concepts. He swore like a sailor, as was his wont. He’d go off on tangents, but then the questions would bring him back. They were delightful sessions because he was such a fun person. To him, it was really a process of chatting about a subject that he loved, rather than writing a book.

I transcribed these interviews, and used what he said there to fill in or replace what was in the original chapters. Some of his stories were really not appropriate for print, but others became useful metaphors/examples, especially after some gentle modifications. Some of them wound up exemplifying points that were besides what originally prompted them, but they were still his stories. In other words, we captured his “schtick.” I gave him the chapters, which he felt were in his own voice in a way that his own actual writing never was, and he made small technical adjustments, but overall was very happy with how it turned out.

The result was a clear, concise book that is now getting glowing reviews. People comment how they like his warm style, and feel like he’s right in the room with them. His past students commented that they were so happy to have his teaching in book form. He went back into his book, and it became alive again. The book is clear and informative, but it’s also got that beagle factor.

There are many ways that writing can be good. If publishing is your goal, remember the importance of the beagle factor. On this eve of Valentine’s Day, let’s remember that it’s the beagle factor that makes the difference between like and love.

Finding the right duck isn’t always easy. In my quest to find Indian runners, I found that the only way to get the pure white ones was to get them “straight run.” In other words, the ducklings were unsexed: males (drakes) and females in equal numbers, as they hatched.

The difficulty is that when mating season comes about, the healthy ratio for confined ducks is about one drake for every three or so ducks, or even fewer. Thus, I now have too many drakes, and I need to find homes for them, for the good of the flock.

So too, when writing, it is important to have the right ideas present in your book, article, course, or dare I say it, blog entry. Something that I see with books—particularly by first-time authors—is that there is the desire to include too many ideas. If we are motivated to share what we know, we want to give a complete picture. But this can be to the detriment of work, as a clutter of ideas can be distracting and unfocused, and ultimately not in the reader’s best interest.

The following approach can help you focus your ideas for the good of the flock. Er… book. A deeper discussion of this is in my article “How to Write a Music Method Book,” which currently resides on the Artists House Web site. (I also periodically give a writing seminar on this topic.)

1. Title. Focus on crafting a working title for your work that articulates your over-arching most important theme. Though the ultimate title will likely be a decision by a marketing department, a good working title will help you focus. For example:

“Beginning Didgeridoo.”

2. Objectives. Write about five short points articulating what the reader will learn from your work. Make sure that they support your title.

• Learn effective circular breathing
• Develop effective and healthy embouchure and playing posture
• Choose the instrument that’s best for you
• Perform six didgeridoo songs
• Imitate twelve animal noises

3. Topics. Confirm that every topic you want to include in your book supports at least one objective.

Let’s say that your first draft turns out to be 400 pages long, so you know you need to cut out some data. Topic 1 is a breathing exercise. That supports the first bullet, so it can stay in. Topic 2 is about the history of the didgeridoo. Since this isn’t listed as an objective, you should seriously consider cutting it, especially since the book is running long. Do this with all topics, and eventually, you will wind up with a much more focused work. It will be easier for your readers to understand what you are trying to communicate.

The mantra is: Deleting is Delightful. Or, save your rejected topics for another work. There is always another opportunity to write. Do this for every single topic you write or consider writing. Be ruthless.

Now, would you like a free drake? Indian runners are a bit too scrawny to eat, but they make good company.

Are you all set with your New Year’s resolutions? Last year, I’m afraid I broke pretty much all of the ones I made, but I did make some progress on one: to be more organized. I’m definitely a convert to the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach by David Allen, though I’m more zealot than master.

David Allen likes to say that acceptable rules of hygiene evolve, and generally speaking, we tolerate less and less skuzziness in our lives as generations pass. For example, people bathe and brush their teeth more often than they did in former decades and centuries. Our tolerance for being dirty and stinky has decreased. He evangelizes for a similar cleanup of personal and professional work habits.

I’m not sure that computer hard drive hygiene has been similarly evolving, in these days where memory is so cheap and plentiful. Maybe we’re a few generations away from really being digitally tidy. But there are great benefits to being organized. You can find things, for instance. Other people can find them too. You can keep track of what’s the most recent version. You can see at a glance what’s missing or where things go. And you can generally escape the feeling (and perception) that your hard disk (and thus, your workplace) is a skuzzy place (different than SCSI!), and generally feel in control of at least part of your environment.

Here are some tips that might help you organize your hard drive—and thus, your work/art.

1. Only use the Documents folder for storage. Avoid storing your files on the desktop or in application folders. If all your personal work is in the Documents folder, you will have a much easier time backing it up, transferring it to a new computer, finding it, and generally living with yourself.

2. In most cases, try to have no more than twenty files in a folder. If you have more than that, additional layers of subfolders might help you. It becomes annoying to try to find items on lists greater than this. Only have more items in a folder if there is a logical sort of sub-organization that goes on within the folder, such as sequentially numbered file names.

3. If you have many projects of a certain type or logical classification, consider bundling them up together in a Projects folder. For example, in my work, I have a folder for Berklee Press projects (books and DVDs), which is part of a higher level of organization called Berklee. I have another folder for my personal compositions. And I have another for my community service activities. There are others, too, but for the sake of this blog, let’s say that there are just those. A snapshot of my hard drive Goose (always name your hard drive), then, looks something like this. Note that I have no files on my desktop. None. Nada. Yesterday, I had about twenty, but that was skuzzy, and it’s cleaned up now, as it gets cleaned up at least once a week (when I am behaving).

4. If you have projects of similar types, consider recurring folder names within them. For example, for book projects, I generally have the same folder types. I’ve found it easiest to organize these projects by the author’s last name. Recent project authors have included Jon Damian, David Franz, and Andrea Stolpe, so here’s what their folder setup looks like:

I currently have 42 active Berklee Press projects! That’s a big, horrible folder: far more than twenty items. I’m always trying to get stuff out of that folder and into my Completed Projects folder. That folder has over 150 subfolders! But since it is seldom accessed, that’s okay.

Note the “Drafts” folders. That’s one step away from the trash, and in fact, once a book is published and I’ve created a CD archive of all the files, I delete all the Drafts folders. (All drafts are still stored on CD.) But it’s helpful to me to have Drafts folders associated with each project.

5. Name your files carefully. When it’s logical, include a sequential number in your file, and a concise descriptor of what it is. Mix case.

For example:

The Chapter folders have numbered chapter files. (Some books, such as Andrea Stolpe’s Popular Lyric Writing, don’t really require separate files for each chapter. It depends on how many embedded graphics there are.)

For Dave Franz’s new edition of Producing in the Home Studio with Pro Tools, the chapter files look something like this (simplified, for the sake of this post):

Graphics files get numbered sequentially by chapter and by image within the chapter. For example, here, chapter 2’s first graphic is called New Session. The second graphic in chapter 2 is called New Track Dialog. Each chapter gets its own folder.

For notation, I used to think that there should be separate folders for Finale files and for graphical export files, but I ultimately found that too cumbersome, in practice. Now, I just have all those files in a Graphics folder, even among other graphical types such as screen shots and diagrams. So, in Jon Damian’s new book The Chord Factory, a typical graphics folder looks something like this, mixing Finale files (.mus), exported notation (.tif), and charts he made in Clarisworks (.cwk):

Keeping them sequential keeps them organized.

If you live like this, your life gets easier. I can’t imagine how many tens of thousands of files are on my computer. Lack of strict organization schemes such as this would make my work grind to a standstill!

If this is an alien idea to you, I recommend that you mend your evil ways, for your own sanity. Simplify! Organization will set you free. For all new work, try to come up with a simple, usable system for organizing your files. In spare moments, try to make sense of any disorganized areas you might have.

Make it a New Year’s resolution to get ALL data files off your desktop at least once a week. The first time you try this might be a painful procedure, but if you’ve got a logical hierarchical setup, it becomes easy to keep it all neat and organized.

Good luck, and happy new year!

There isn’t much reason to compare the works of Yoron Israel and Pablo Peña. Both are killer drummers, Pablo studied with Yoron, and they each released a Berklee Press DVD this past Fall. As the producer of both projects, which were filmed back to back on two consecutive days, I worked with both artists simultaneously, and so for me, considering them together has been natural and an interesting exploration about the drum set generally.

Yoron’s DVD is “Creative Jazz Improvisation for Drum Set.”

Pablo’s DVD is “New World Drumming.”

Pablo comes from the Dominican Republic, where he founded and still runs a music school. He came to Berklee via some passionate and active advocacy from two artists of international repute. He is the only Berklee student ever to publish with Berklee Press while still enrolled. Pablo’s project concept was initially pitched to Berklee Press by someone high enough up in the Berklee administration that I stand when speaking to him on the phone. So, we gave Pablo the benefit of a doubt, despite his not being a faculty member.

I was invited to a workshop Pablo was presenting, and was just astonished at the things he was doing with a drum set. In addition to incorporating a tambora into his kit, which would ordinarily completely occupy both of a drummer’s hands (and 100% of his concentration), Pablo was playing several different pedals with each foot—essentially playing a groove with about ten instrument sounds simultaneously. This is ridiculous. This is “disgusting,” as Victor Mendoza likes to say about particularly gifted students. This needs to be caught on film, and he needs to explain it in slow motion.

Then, asking around, one of Berklee’s top faculty drummers—who I will add is not the easiest person in the world to impress—stated emphatically, “Pablo is going to become a drum hero. Unless he falls into drugs or has some major crisis, he is going to become a drum hero.” And then, I learned that several teachers were actually taking lessons from him. He’s not the average student, so we made an exception, and signed him up.

Shooting videos is expensive and complex, partly because a lot of lighting and sound equipment must be rented and set up. For this reason, it makes economic sense to film more than one video in the same session. So, when we signed Pablo, I was asked to scout out another viable drum DVD project, which meant finding another drummer to quickly come up with a solid product concept for us to film on a day adjacent to Pablo’s filming date.

The obvious choice to help us do something as vastly complex as this in such a pinch was Yoron Israel, assistant chair of the percussion department. Yoron is, in my opinion, among the most musical and gifted drummers I’ve ever heard. Pablo’s music makes me think, “It is impossible for a human to groove like that.” Yoron’s music makes me think, “What a beautiful story.” Yoron is also known as being rock-solid reliable, and the consummate professional, teacher, and gentleman. So, he was a natural fit, and I was very pleased and honored that he accepted my request (plea?) to do a DVD with us under those circumstances.

The results were terrific. Pablo’s DVD shows how to incorporate elements of world percussion technique and language into your groove, and expands the possibilities of what the drum set can do. He methodically breaks down his impossible grooves, showing the role of the clave, etc., and somehow makes it seem within the realm of human possibility. Yoron’s DVD gives unique insight into the creative process of drum-set soloing, showing how factors such as rhythm and melody can inspire soloing ideas, and how to have a strong narrative concept in the solo. Both DVDs feature inspiring, gorgeous performance footage of some wonderful and unique musicianship. I’ve watched both drummers and non-drummers watch these DVDs, utterly captivated.

Quick story: After we were done filming, Director Bob Monagle gave us a ride to the airport. Bob’s radio was set to a jazz station.

Bob said to Yoron, “So what else are you up to?”

Yoron answered, “Actually, I just finished the recording that we’re listening to right now!”

Talk about a made for Hollywood moment! That’s like sitting next to someone a bus who is reading a book you’ve written. Or edited. That’s my fantasy! I think the recording was one of the ones he did with David Fathead Newman.

Anyhow, as a duo, these two DVDs represent an incredible breath of what drumming is and can be. Both musicians have something unique to say, each in their own individual ways, and both make such wonderful music and share such profound and practical insights into how they do it.

I’ll add that everyone at the Tanner/Monagle studio was first rate, and both fun and informative to work with, particularly director Bob Monagle. If you ever need a recording/video/post-production studio in Milwaukee, I recommend them highly.

Any musician would find these performances fascinating. Particularly drummers will find them inspiring and informative.

Writing books tends to drive musicians bonkers, particularly towards the end of the process when we’re fussing with minutia, reviewing proofs, cleaning up the final punchlist of details, and awaiting the final endlessly long march to the printer. Authors get crabby. There are two primary reasons why, in my opinion:

1. Books are persistent artifacts of an author’s best work and best thinking, and so getting books exactly right is intertwined with perceptions of self worth. At the end of the project, we feel stuck with its limitations, and are running out of time to make it the perfect, most holistic statement of who we are.

2. Musicians need to create actual music. Writing books about music is not the same as making music, and towards the end of the process, we get antsy because it’s been such an incredibly laborious distraction from what we need to be our primary life focus: making music.

(I won’t offer a third reason: that they are getting fed up with me torturing them…. That couldn’t be the case, could it?!)

An antidote to the first one, about identity, is to plan to write a series of books in your life that will collectively articulate a part of your persona, but more importantly to realize that no book could ever possibly do a soul justice. Books just don’t have that capability.

An antidote to the third one, if it exists (and I’m sure it does not), is to know that I will leave you alone very soon.

The middle one is what I really want to discuss. This past weekend, I took my boys to visit Sue (Gedutis) Lindsay and her family. Sue is a friend, musician, and fellow editor of Berklee Media projects. Here are Annie Lindsay and Forrest Feist munching on French fries, before we went to Plimoth Plantation.

We were catching up, and I was complaining about being generally crabby, and I mentioned feeling a bit far from music these days, when I seem to spend all my time talking and writing about music, rather than actually creating the real thing.

She offered a bit of wisdom that I feel is important to pass on. Cynical Sue said (and I paraphrase), “Musicians are special people, and we need to be creating music all the time, to feel normal.” She discussed her own journey through various distractions that were almost, but not quite, music, including writing books, research, teaching, and so forth. It’s not that these aren’t worthy, fun, and even necessary undertakings. We must call them “pseudo-musical activities,” though, and doing the real thing is where it’s really at. We must carve out time to create real music, for sanity’s sake, and be ferociously protective of this time.

So, I’m looking at life, and counting directions. I have my family (including two little boys), an old/maintenance-needing house, endless yard work, I serve on three town boards (chairing one), there’s my full-time gig at Berklee Press, part-time teaching Finale online, a variety of neglected hobbies, a few assorted other obligations, plus protecting my flock of chickens/ducks/geese from that hungry fox….. Quite a lot happening here, which all conspire to create distance from that spiritual life engine called music, which is the primary force that can keep me relatively sane and whole, but which is now at arm’s length. And I feel it poignantly this November, as days grow short and the world grows cold.

Prioritization is increasingly a necessary life’s skill for me, and I would venture, for anyone, as life developments bring increasing directions without offering us more hours in the day.

Arthur Cunningham, my first composition teacher and life mentor, once said to me, “I promise you that if you write every day, you will improve.”

So, here’s my thought/recommendation:

Create music every day.

Even if it’s for five minutes, you need to touch that fire, no how busy you are, and no matter how deeply your daily life is embroiled into pseudo-musical or non-musical activities. An hour would be great, but five minutes is better than nothing. Recognize that pseudo-musical activities (writing, teaching, studying, copying parts….) are not the same as making music, even though they might be delightful experiences in their own right. We need to be constantly warmed by that real core energy of musical spirit.

Commercial success and even inter-human communication are secondary to being warmed by the fire of creativity. Consider it a life imperative to touch the real thing. See progress over weeks, months, and years, not over the course of a few minutes.

If this rings true to you, please stop surfing the ’net, and create music for five minutes RIGHT NOW. Close your door, then play your guitar, beat your drum, improvise, scat sing, write a lyric—whatever the real-deal-essence-of-what-music-is-all-about-closest-to-center activity is for you. Then schedule a time when you will do it again tomorrow, and repeat. Just five minutes.

Let me know how it goes.

Complain, complain, complain. As an editor, that’s what I do all day long. Don’t do this, don’t do that. This chapter is fluff, this paragraph is redundant. Yank this, reword that, add this, rethink that.

It’s not an issue with Berklee Press authors specifically. They are great—smart, experienced teachers, generally with uniquely perspectives on both how to teach and how to make music. It’s just a part of the editing process. If we’re aiming to produce the best books on their topics ever published, we have to get deep down into looking at minutiae, which often, admittedly, the only people who really care (consciously) are other editors. But in making it better than necessary, we hopefully make it really great—useful to musicians trying to improve their craft.

Twelve or so years ago, in another job, I had a manager who once said to me, “You can come to me with any problem, as long as you also bring me its solution.” At the time, it made me so mad I almost quit, but there’s definitely some truth to it, in terms of a productive business model. So, rather than just writing, “This stinks, redo,” editors generally suggest fixes to the problem. “This is redundant, so delete this paragraph and replace it with an example, to liven things up.”

Which brings us to baseball, which I have always loathed. I was thirty before I attended a live professional baseball game. But an ex-friend insisted that it was my duty as an American to at least give it a try, so she dragged me to Fenway Park, where the Red Sox beat some other team. I’m sorry that someone had to lose the game, with so many people watching. Whether or not it was the Red Sox remains irrelevant to me.

It’s been nearly ten years since that boring afternoon (and since I heard from my companion at Fenway Park). But the Red Sox played a significant (to them) game a few days ago, and people keep trying to chat with me about it.

Rather than just complain, I will offer some suggestions for how to make the Great American Waste of Time less loathsome.

My Suggested Improved Rules of Baseball

1. Make it a rule that to be on a professional baseball team, you must have been born and raised in that team’s city—or at least truly associated with the city, in some way. At the game I attended, Mo Vaughn (actually born in Connecticut, but at least it’s New England) hit a home run. The man sitting in front of me was so excited, he said to his little boy, “Wow, now you can say that you saw Mo Vaughn hit a home run in Fenway Park!”

For a moment, I actually thought that maybe there was indeed something positive about baseball—some city pride in a local hero’s achievement. But then shortly afterwards, Mr. Vaughn got a better offer, and dumped Boston for Anaheim, and then later joined the Mets before retiring to sell hot dogs in Somerville. So, there is really practically nothing “Boston” or even “New England,” about the Red Sox, and I can’t imagine why anyone takes civic pride in how this team of carpet baggers fairs.

Also, it’s a bit discriminatory. The Dominican Republic raises the best baseball players in the world, but they don’t get credit for it because their native sons are signed up to represent teams all over the United States. Is Boston better than Detroit? Is a city famous for higher education better than one famous for making cars? Certainly, baseball is no indicator, because the teams purportedly from those cities actually have nothing to do with the cities at all. Making a “must be born and raised” clause would make the games much more relevant as reflections of society.

By the way, I call Mo Vaughn a hero not because he can whack a baseball but because of all the work he’s been doing in rehabilitating low income housing. For that, people should cheer him whether he’s at the plate on the field or the plate at the hot dog stand.

If we don’t make the advertised regional origins more real, then yank the city name from the name of the team, and just call it Red Sox Corporation. We don’t refer to other companies located in Boston with “Boston” in their name. Boston Fidelity? Boston Gillette? Boston Berklee? So, why “Boston Red Sox?” All that’s currently Boston about them are some file cabinets and some grass.

2. Make player salaries not exceed that of the snack vendors. Most of watching baseball involves waiting for something to happen, and the only way to make all the tedious waiting palatable is to drink beer and eat hot dogs. Therefore, I suggest that the vendors are actually more critical to the overall experience than the players are. Let’s give compensation where it is due.

3. Give the loafing players something to do while the batter and pitcher do their thing. Besides the fact that my parking lot’s fee goes from $17 to $35 a day when there is a game at Fenway Park, what I hate most about baseball is that it is such a waste of resources. So many highly paid, competent professionals just stand around, scratching themselves, waiting for a very small percentage of the team to do any work.

Everyone else might try juggling tricks, for instance. The shortstop, the left fielder, everyone in the dugout, and so on, could all juggle, and stop only when the ball comes their way. Sheesh, their salaries are high enough, they could at least toss around some clubs or flaming torches. Anything, to relieve the tedium!

4. Improve the food. Maybe Italian pastries? And how about some decent beer—like, a local microbrew, rather than the standard commercial swill. Boston’s Beer Works is right across the street from Fenway Park, so serving their beer in the bleachers would be a natural fit. Wheeling kegs across the street should be cheaper than trucking in Budweiser from the Midwest. And how about some true Boston fare, such as fried seafood and lobster rolls?

5. Get some diversity on the field. Meaning, mix up that monoculture of grass with a more environmentally conscious assortment of pasture plants that will support a healthier ecosystem. Maybe let some heritage breed animals graze on it when there’s no game on—traditional New England breeds such as Devon cows, Jacob sheep, Dominique chickens, Pilgrim geese, and such. And leave the droppings. It would make those dramatic slides onto base more heroic—particularly if there were some chickens flapping out of the way.

6. Improve the music. They have some pretty great artists doing the national anthem, and such, and I was heartened when Tiger Okoshi performed with his pickup band of taiko drummers and horn players, in honor of Dice-K’s debut. But surely, there are more opportunities for live music? With three conservatories (Berklee, NEC, Boston Conservatory) so close to Fenway Park that there is the constant danger of a stray foul ball damaging any number of Steinways, you’d think that the Sox would have the community spirit to give some of their neighbors some gigs.

Just be local, is what I’m saying. Local beer, local music, local players. Be Boston. Then, if a nasty city like Elizabeth, NJ or Waco, TX hacks up a team, I’d genuinely want the Red Sox to win.

By the way, Tiger Okoshi is a Berklee professor and a wonderfully creative jazz trumpeter. He was co-author (with Charles Lewis) of The Berklee Practice Method for Trumpet, which teaches trumpeters how to play in rock bands/small jazz combos.

See, this is a relevant entry to my blog.

Anyhow, I hope that these suggested modifications of the rules of baseball can be enacted right away, and thus lead to some much-needed improvements in the game.

To see the Red Sox schedule, and thus know when to avoid parking in my lot next year, click here.

It’s “hip-hop.” Lowercase h, use the hyphen. Feel good about it.

This is controversial, as are so many aspects of hip-hop. But I’m happy to lean on the big guns for this preference. It’s how The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal write “hip-hop.” Also Keyboard Magazine. BET doesn’t seem to care much, using both “hip-hop” and “hip hop.” The American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet (Princeton University), The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and every other dictionary I consulted all render it “hip-hop.”

Lowercase is similarly accepted in other musical style names, such as jazz, blues, rock, classical, bossa nova, and so on. Motown, Latin jazz, and Delta blues get the capital only because the names come from place names, which get capitals, e.g., Roman numerals and French kiss (though these are also frequently set lowercase). “Bebop” is a minor monkey wrench; it lost its hyphen in most contemporary usage, but the b is decidedly lowercase.

All in all, I’m confident that “hip-hop” is a sound house style choice for Berklee Press.

One group that disagrees is Harvard University’s “Hiphop Archive”. This think tank is a treasure trove of rumination about “Hiphop.” Their argument for how they render the term (uppercase, no hyphen) is that it’s the name of a culture, not just a “cool dance,” (the likely etymological derivation of the term). Hiphop style includes language, visual arts, dance, and social practices, as well as musical genre(s).

Eh, maybe, they have a point. If one of our authors truly wishes to focus on these aspects, and feels strongly about the word choice, we might permit the anomalous rendering, though violating house style complicates the publishing process and I’d really prefer not to and would try to guilt the author into reconsidering. And the “Hiphop” preference just doesn’t seem to have much traction in the world outside Harvard University. For example, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a provocative film by Byron Hurt, similarly discusses the social issues of hip-hop, but he renders the term as “hip-hop.” And not to pick on what is likely a sore point for the Hiphop Archive, even elsewhere on the Harvard University Web site, the term is rendered as “hip-hop.” Harvard, that’s just not good team spirit.

Anyhow, there is good reason to separate the culture from the musical aspects of the term, particularly at Berklee. Contemporary hip-hop culture is often problematic and even despised by its fans, with so much promulgation of aggression, the objectification of women, the romanticization of materialism, and so forth. This hasn’t always been the case; there are deep roots in hip-hop as an activity of peacemaking and a tool of raising social conscience. But that’s not what’s selling the most records, today, and there are good reasons to separate the medium from the current message.

Berklee hip-hop guru Prince Charles Alexander, one of my current guiding lights, suggests looking at hip-hop as essentially a production style, with emblematic sounds and groove characteristics. The music serves as a bed for the rap, the content of which can be anything. This, to me, is a healthy way to see it. You can love the sound of hip-hop, but despise many of its artists’ messages. For the record, PC was initially leaning towards the capital H, but I’m trying to talk him out of it.

I see his technocratic approach as a good teaching strategy, and the lowercase h helps us to divorce the evolving social elements of hip-hop culture from its essential musical/production elements in the classroom, as well as the printed page.

The homoerotic imagery, the desensitization regarding violence, the role of women—for now, I’m happy to let Harvard University sort these out. In a sense, it is more revolutionary to think about hip-hop in terms of shout choruses, Roland TR-808 drum sounds, and beat subdivisions. By presenting it in these terms, the tools of creating hip-hop become within reach of a great diversity of potential artists, who will hopefully rescue this vibrant, creative form from some of its current doldrums of content.