Category: Uncategorized
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Looking Up
We moved from South Hampton, NH, to Newton Junction, NH, when I was three years old. Both houses were on quiet, wooded streets… and both were colonial houses with sloping floors and multiple additions over their years, and both had large old barns… and bats. My dad taught American history and my mom worked for…
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This is my confused face / On being a fan
I’m am completely fascinated by Kanye West’s situation. His last album, Donda, was streamed a zillion times (well, 60 million the first day and then on up) and as a follow up he decided he wanted to do something boutique. He released “Donda 2” as stems, essentially four discrete tracks of audio (drums, vocals, etc.)…
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Don’t ever change, I like you just the way you are…
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines” – Emerson What IS change, exactly? I mean, given that time is moving right along, isn’t it impossible for any thing to be the thing it was a moment ago? Let me back up… or at least get…
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The Initial Disturbance
The initial disturbance is, according to the interwebs (which are always correct), the thing that sets a ripple into motion. A stone dropping into water, an unexpected message, or a new piece of music can set ripples into motion that last for years. I’ve experienced a few time ripples in the past couple of weeks,…
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Collaborating with the Medium, or, How the Container Shapes the Art
I love Hipstamatic. It’s a brilliant little app on my phone that acts like an old Polaroid camera. I take a shot and Hipstamatic applies a bit of processing to it and puts a nice little frame around the image. And then I’m done. The frame and the processing basically prohibit me from doing anything…
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Snapshots: The Piano and Me
I started playing piano in high school around 1985 or so. I’m not sure what led me to it, but from the very beginning I felt like sitting at a piano was an opportunity to collaborate, an opportunity to converse with a machine made only for expression. My lessons hit an early dead end when…
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The Fragility of Flow
Roadblocks, the muse, and an unexpected descent into lunacy My professional career has generally been one of removing obstacles to the creativity of others. I’m sure it was my theatre training that taught me to hide the nuts and bolts in the interest of creating a captivating illusion…and from day one in the recording studio…
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January 2021 News
https://mailchi.mp/4320f845f9d3/news-from-tom-eaton-january-2021 My first monthly track for 2021 is a new piece called “in the shadow.” The lengthening shadows of winter inspired this slowly breathing study of darker spaces. I frequently move ideas between piano and guitar, and in this case the guitar made some choices for me and it decided to open the piece into…
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November News
A quick rundown of what’s been going on. The creative process during a pandemic… working remote, in person, and alone! November 2020 Newsletter Lockdowns and social distancing have created challenges and opportunities in a life of music making. The process always ends here, with music coming out of my speakers in Newburyport, but the journey…
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Lost in the Moment
I remember the exact moment last year when Peter Guralnick told me the title of his next book… we were sitting in my control room and I was in the middle of writing my new album. We were discussing why people make music… a process we each have deep perspectives on but from very different…
SOUNDS & SUBSTANCE 