Julie Lyonn Lieberman Catch-Up Transcript
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Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Musicians are incredibly beautiful, for the most part, a beautiful community to be a part of.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This is a bonus catch-up episode with Julie Lyonn Lieberman. My original conversation with her is linked in the description. Julie is an innovative multistyle violinist, vocalist, author, composer, producer, and educator. In our original episode, we discussed her unique path through world music. Some of her many projects, including You Are Your Instrument, which was the first book written about how to overcome and prevent musician's overuse injuries. We had also talked about her memoir, the Roaring Brook Fiddler. In today's short episode, she'll talk about the process of recording the audio book, which is enriched with her music, and there's an excerpt featuring an important experience from her childhood. You can listen to this wherever you get your podcasts, watch the video on YouTube and read the transcript. Everything is linked with links to Julie's many projects on my website, leah roseman.com. Hey, Julie, so nice to talk with you again.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
It's great to see you.
Leah Roseman:
So since we spoke, a lot of things have happened for you professionally, including the release of the audio version of your memoir, the Roaring Brook Fiddler. So do you want to start with that project?
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Yes. It was rather arduous, but took eight months. I'm very proud of the audio book version of the Roaring Brook Fiddler because I was able to then incorporate my original vision, which was to include music I've recorded professionally across my entire lifetime, sometimes behind my voice, narrating, sometimes standing alone for dramatic effect, sometimes as a whole chapter in of itself.
Leah Roseman:
And in terms of the actual process of reading your own words, I mean, it's a very emotional book. How could you sort of control for that?
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
I do admit there were certain moments when I had to rerecord because I started crying. Because to read effectively, you have to walk the walk with the story. And sometimes I was surprised by things that didn't upset me. And then the areas that did, if you'd asked me to write down which chapters I thought would evoke that kind of response, I would've been way, way off. So that told me that I still needed to do some processing about those life events.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. You've certainly lived through a lot for the music you decided to include separately because you play in different styles. I'm curious what you to include that way.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Well, my own original music is very different from what I'm known for out in the world in terms of teacher training and school residencies and presentations at conferences there. I'm the Multistyle person, but my own music is all original, very unique. And yes, some of it does fall into certain style categories, but most of it is Julie Music.
Leah Roseman:
And what else would you like to share about the process for other people may be interested in doing this sort of project, things you might wish you'd known at the beginning?
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Yeah, that's a lot. A former friend who I haven't seen for years read my memoir, fell in love with it and contacted me. And I mentioned to him because he's an actor in LA that I was getting ready to turn the book into an audiobook. And he very graciously paid someone who does hundreds of audiobooks for a session with me, who counseled me to use Pro Tools. But this was an enormous learning curve for me. And so I contacted an old friend of my sister's who's a very famous composer in Los Angeles for movies and commercials and all that. And I asked him what I should do because YouTube was not helping me. And he said, always, he's older than I am, always ask a young person. They know all the answers. And then he flies out to the East coast once a year to teach film scoring at N Y U.
So he hooked me up with a student he had met there who was very impressed by and had used for a few projects, and she was amazing. So I think if one wants to make an audio book, your first step is to decide on the software and then find the right person to turn to when you're stuck. I used Zoom to video our record our meetings so that I could go back. She was very adept at doing screen shares and circling things and showing me, first you tap on this and then you do that, et cetera. And then I could have that playing with Pro Tools next to it. Later I started using a very simple program that I've had for decades called Twisted Wave, and I found the things I was struggling with in Pro Tools I could do very quickly in Twisted Wave.
So I think that maybe when he started making audiobooks, that was the only program to use. And I do understand that I had to go back to it for multi-track, but I had Cubase and I probably could have used that, but that wasn't a program he knew about or used. So I would say first you decide, is it only going to be your voice? Because if it's only going to be your voice, just use a simple program that you do have some plugins available for where you can control certain things, fade in, fade out, just certain basics. But if you already have a program like Cubase or Pro Tools or whatever else is out there that gives you multiple tracks and you want to incorporate music in which I assume those of you listening would want to do because you're probably all musicians, go with the program you already have that you're familiar with. Because honestly, I could have done the whole book in a couple of months instead of eight months if I'd worked with the program that I already knew how to use.
Speaker 3:
The music charged through me swirling and pumping, dense and wondrous, I gave myself to this lattice work of sound. I was so absorbed in listening that I confused one hand with the other and bit into the block instead of my sandwich. Surprised by the sudden clash of my baby teeth on the hard surface rather than soft bread, I jolted into a new awareness. Although I could feel my physical body seated on the floor, I also felt as if hovering near the ceiling, looking down, my sense of self was both magnified and released from physical boundaries. I was sound and sound was power, power to do, to be, to feel anything, everything. Suddenly I was so much larger than the body called Julie, and I liked that feeling. Then the music ended. I looked to my mother, but she was busy in the kitchen. I ate my sandwich
Over the next decade, there would only be momentary tastes of that euphoric experience, almost always inspired by music. But this one potent moment gave me a glimpse of who I was, of my essence. It impressed upon me the promise offered by music. I didn't have words for this deep sense of self, but it was enough to make the ordinary day-to-day tutelage on how to navigate the material world and earn my land legs, as an American Jewish girl, tedious. The only thing I was certain of was that my path would be in the creative arts and that I would fulfill my responsibility to the family code. I was expected to live a life filled with important accomplishments. I was expected to help change the world. My parents supported and nurtured my creativity, but did little to prepare me for or protect me from the physical world since they too navigated the day-to-day while their hearts and souls were elsewhere.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need my listeners' help. Please consider buying me a coffee. The link to my Kofi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much.
It's interesting you assume my audience is all musicians. I know a lot of people are musicians, but I think I hope there's a lot of music lovers who don't necessarily play an instrument and are just loving music. So I think people are really curious about people's different creative process and different styles and all that sort of thing. Now, this episode will be tied to your original one. So for those listeners who haven't listened to it yet, they can just go directly there. You've done so many things.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Well, let me just say that the year started with rewriting four of my books to update them. My Blues Fiddle book, my Improvising Violin book, You Are Your Instrument, which hadn't been updated since 1991, and I'm very proud of the new version with a new cover. And on third edition, The Roaring Brook Fiddler, I added a chapter into it.
Leah Roseman:
I have to thank you for introducing me to the idea of interviewing Verna Gillis because that was an amazing connection and I had not heard of her before you suggested her name. And I get so many fascinating suggestions from so many musicians I know. But that one, I just, as soon as I read about her, I thought, okay, I have to contact her. And she was very gracious, and we had lovely discussions before during the recording, the episode and afterwards, I really, she's so amazing. And then I was asking you how you got to know her. And it was interesting, the connection, if you could talk to that.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
My mother was an actress, and so my sister and I grew up very involved in theater. And my mother was a creative drama specialist. She really launched that in the United States and wrote a number of books about it. Her specialty was to use creative drama with kids that have been kicked out of their schools or were having learning disabilities. So she taught them in one of her programs, math, science, history through creative drama, acting everything out. So my sister and I began going to, growing up in New Jersey, would be on going to a Guerrilla Theater group at Rutgers in Newark, New Jersey. And then my sister began, she was older than me, kind of foraging, shall we say, in New York City. So I don't remember how she discovered Verna Gillis, but that became a name that I kept hearing and hearing and hearing, and the name of her workshop Soundscape came into me and became something I put in my book, Creative Band and Orchestra, created a whole technique for teaching improvisation that I call soundscapes. But that word came from her,
Leah Roseman:
Which came from Murray Schafer, which yeah, I talked about with her. Yeah. Yeah. And his book, the Tuning of the World. I took his course Soundscapes when he was a visiting professor at McGill back in the eighties. But anyway, it's a whole thing. But yeah, I talked about with Verna extensively, the whole idea of soundscapes and what it meant to her. And actually, one of the questions I was asking her was memories she had of sounds that have kind of disappeared and she came up with a wonderful list. I'm curious, are there sounds that you used to hear in your daily life that you no longer hear?
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
The answer makes me feel sad. I have hardly ever hear bees collecting nectar from flowers out front. We used to have hundreds of them now, maybe three or four. I used to hear silence. I'm living rural now, so there's more silence. But that means that when a truck or car comes by or the airplanes change their roots, it's 10 times louder because it's not filtered through a lot of other sounds. I used to hear a lot more joy in people's voices. We we're living through very challenging times with even more challenges up ahead. And in that sense, it makes me even deeply proud to be a musician because music brings joy .
Leah Roseman:
Very well expressed, and I think it's our best language as humans to communicate with each other in many ways.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
I agree. And in my world, we embrace all cultures. We love the music from all cultures. We don't say, "well, you come from there, so I'm not going to...". Musicians are incredibly beautiful, for the most part, beautiful community to be a part of, and the world should be learning from all of us.
Leah Roseman:
Well, on that note, I want to thank you so much for this catch-up conversation today. Really appreciate it.
Julie Lyonn Lieberman:
Thank you. Appreciate everything you're doing. All right. Thank you so much.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. There's such a fascinating variety to life and music, and this series features wonderful musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music. With over a hundred episodes to explore, many episodes feature guests playing music spontaneously as part of the episode, or sharing performances and albums. I hope that the inspiration and connection found in a meaningful creative life, the challenges faced and the stories from such a diversity of artists will draw you into this weekly series with many topics that will resonate with all listeners. Please share your favorite episodes with your friends and do consider supporting this independent podcast. The link is in the description. Have a great week.
