maudlin of the well interview thread three Toby: Unfortunately, some instrumentalists have focused SO MUCH on the skill, that they never learned anything else about music, like emotion or metaphysics, so they believe they're really accomplished when they're really just very isolated. Greg: I totally think that's true of many musicians. You could program a robot to play really good technical guitar riffs and fast solos but it takes someone who treats music as an extension of the soul to bring true musical life to what they play and what they bring to the listener. That being said, I will also agree with Sam that it feels good when you actually pull off some sort of decent technical kind of lick as long as you use it properly in the context of the music. Exposé: It's interesting that the word "progressive" often gets tied to complexity when it seems to only be one axis of musical depth. With MotW, it seems like the complexity is less a means to an end, and more like an occasional result, and certainly the result of a distinct compositional focus rather than any preplanned intention. In the booklet of your first album, you give distinct compositional credit to particular individuals, while on the newest albums the credit seems to go the group as a whole. Can you explain more about the band's compositional process, especially in light of the shift from the debut to the new albums? Greg: I know Toby probably has the most authentic opinion on the composition process, however as an outsider looking in, I can say I have always found Maudlin's music to be very complex. The ideas can be very simple but when the parts go together there is a very dense layer of music that at least I hear. I would go as far to say that even Byron's lyrics have their own complexity as well with very deep emotional themes and imagery. To listen to Maudlin is an engaging experience and I have read many times that people really need a few listens to take it in and while we don't sacrifice the music for the sake of making something complicated, I would like to think that those reactions people have mentioned are a sign of some sort of complexity in our music, as a piece of work which slowly reveals something to the listener instead of "instant gratification" music like bubblegum pop or the like. Toby: I think especially when you have a progressive band, examining the librettos can tell you a lot about the maturation or evolution of the band's personal state of mind, viewpoints, etc. With our first release on Dark Symphonies, the whole aura surrounding that one included a whole mess of circumstantial affectors, for example it was not only the label's first release other than Autumn Tears (who are the band that the label owner is in), but it was our first "real" release, you know, I was a 21-year old kid, really excited to be signed and having an album released on a label, something I had always dreamed about, and all parties involved were just anxious to get the album out, so it has this kind of childlike excitement to it... at that point there were still elements of ego in the music, so we credited people with what they did on the album, we had huge thanks lists, all this rock star bullshit. Fucking aeons beyond that are what I'd like to believe we've come in those two years. I think now, the element of ego is gone and we're thinking more about the music itself and how credit doesn't matter to the music, and basically all the rock star bullshit is gone, and I'm very thankful for that. So that's why we didn't credit people with instruments or do personal thanks lists. We only thanked people who specifically helped with the albums on the new one, whereas before it was like we thanked everyone we knew for being our friend; it was seriously lame. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens next time as far as the music goes. Most everything we've done up to this point has basically started with a song I wrote at least every guitar and bass part for, and then the band would just do that. Terran wrote most all of his keyboard parts and the wind parts, but this band started off as a studio project of me, Greg, and Byron, and then more and more people were added, and we're even now evolving as far as participation and input levels go. When we were preparing for the recording though, and touching up parts and working on textures, we did a very interesting thing which I feel worked extremely well and would like to continue to do, and that is we drew up maps for the songs. So I would sometimes have this sort of bare bones version of a song, and then the band would sit in a circle and I would play on an acoustic for them... this is how the song goes, then it does this, then this, etc, etc. And we had a sheet of paper for each song, and we would conceptually design the piece as map, like for example we would say, over this part, the texture needs to be clarinets doing minor seconds. So we would mark that on the map. We didn't know what notes they were going to be, we just knew the general sound and texture. So then Terran takes this map and he sort of follows the map 13 paces to the palm tree and turns left for 4 more paces, digs at the X and finds exactly what notes and rhythms those minor seconds are saying. Anyway, much of everything on Bath and Leaving Your Body Map was taken care of in a similar way. Exposé: When a basketball player (for example) takes over a game, and is scoring and passing effortlessly, the player is often "in the zone." This is similar to an improvisational jam session where all the players are locked in, the thinking stops, and the music just flows in effortlessly. Playing when the entire band is in a groove creates an almost mystical atmosphere. While MotW definitely are a compositionally oriented group, it still seems like this sense of being "in the groove," so to speak, is palpable throughout, particularly on the new albums. How does this musical equivalent, to use a metaphor, of "automatic writing" come in on a compositional level? Toby: To me, this is a central focus of motW music and what we've in the past called "astral" music. It's the idea that all art, music, writing, pre-exists in the universe (in some sort of abstract, intangible astral embodiment), and that the artist is merely a channel or a vessel which the universe uses to share this art with us. I also think it doesn't exist as "notes" or "pictures" but just as this sort of aether, an idea, and the human element is the artist's personal translation of the meaning. So there can be one idea that two different artists translate differently into two different works. So art ends up being a mix of this divine voice and the human translation of that voice. Think of the Bible or the Koran as an example - hailed as a message from God but obviously translated into human language. It can't really be a 100% accurate representation of the original message. Whoever wrote it added their own personality to it somehow. In the Bible also, there's a passage that talks about how if a man does a good deed, he shouldn't take credit for it because all good things come from God, hence the good deed was actually God doing work through this man - without God there can be no good, so the credit for the good deed goes to God. It's like with music or other art - it's the creative energy of the universe (a.k.a. god) that's responsible for the art, not the human, so the credit for it goes to that abstract creative force. The way that this works in motW can be put simply in the terms of that we take the approach of "finding" our parts rather than writing them. Instead of just putting together stuff that sounds good, we search and search until, eureka, THAT's the RIGHT part. That's what's SUPPOSED to go there! It feels right and has an amazing magnetism to the piece. Sometimes, it's even happened where it's been like, shit, I don't even like that part that much, but it's supposed to go there. So we use it anyway, because it's "mandated". It's really gradual and takes a lot of time to find the right parts, it's automatic writing but not instant, if you know what I mean. Like, we're instructed on what's right and wrong for the piece, but we still have to do the work to translate the message we hear. I also want to point out that I don't believe everyone in the band agrees with me on this, for example I'm going to make an assumption (and Terran, correct me if I'm wrong), but I think Terran, for one, probably believes that he writes his own parts and doesn't buy into this flaky nonsense that I'm spouting to you. But I believe Terran, or any other musician or artist who believes the work is coming from them and them alone really is getting it from another place as well, but just doesn't have as metaphysical or fatalist a view on existence as I do, and their point of view is more logical, down to earth, or even anthropocentric. Greg: My take is related to Toby's but maybe not as drastic. I come from a different perspective as a soloist. I believe in the idea of God or the creative energy "speaking" through the musician, so the artist isn't creating the work him/herself but just speaking to the listener on a spiritual level. So for me the responsibility of the musician/artist is in trying to recreate what the energy is telling them and translating it for the listener to hear on different levels. It sounds weird and I really don't intellectualize my thoughts very well but it all goes back to my feeling that the music I listen to is justified by the feeling I get from it. In that particular case it is that artist speaking this hidden language to me, but translated into something I can hear in my limited human understanding, but something which my soul comprehends on some sort of subconscious level. In either case, mine or Toby's the main thing I believe we want to point out is that artists should stop being egotistical about their art. They are just vessels for art not the creator. We want to get rid of ego in art because ego is what creates the things that I hate in art, all the condescension and pretentiousness. Terran: I'm actually not that different in my view of composition. I do believe I write my own parts, but I don't know that that's the same as saying that the work is coming from me and only me. To start off we all learn by listening to music, so some of the work comes from other people I've listened to. And there's also that first creative spark, inspiration, which just sort of comes or doesn't. I'd be more inclined to say that it's an abstraction of our own life experiences than a message from "another place," but I think that's really a difference in how I conceptualize the spiritual world, not in how I think about music. I agree completely with Toby and Greg that the music is more important than the musician, and that the purest experience of composition contains no element of ego and feels more like discovery than creation. (This is something that can be applied to fiction writing as well. I've heard more than one writer describe being surprised at what a character in their own book was doing, as if the writer himself was only recording the events, not inventing them...) continued > thread four