“I really love to feel what happens when a song starts to come out, but I can’t think too much. There’s two ways I do this--this is bizarre. One is totally intuitive and then I’ll use music theory. The other is, I might have this sudden tension, or desire or a certain aim towards this. Half (‘The Awakened Heart’) is in DADGAD (tuning) and half of it is in standard. DADGAD I use as sort of a compositional palate, because you can get some different kinds of chords and things. The standard part tends to be more of, ‘ok, here’s a 2-5 here I could use a substitution,’ but it tends to be the melody or something comes out and then I’ll dress it up with something else. But it’s still an intuitive mixed with the other.
“I play really late. Last night I worked on a song until 3:30 in the morning. In between going to bed and your day, that’s perfect for me to start to drift over and start listening and there’s no phone’s to bother you, there’s no nothing between you. The morning’s great for developmental exercises. Working on theory, the body, the mind is nice and clear and everything. And still stuff will come out from that way too. But I tend to go—the nighttime I’ll put a loop on and you just kind of try to transcend.”
Songwriting is a spiritual highway for the guitarist.
“I’ll conjure up an image and that takes care of itself. It’s like watching a play, you just let it unfold. If I don’t think too much then I’m able to follow. Then this thing will dictate where I’m supposed to go, because all of a sudden it will come; wham-wham-wham-wham. Then it will take time—it’s almost like, ‘oh damn,’ you don’t want to slow it down, but it’s almost like then you have to edit. ‘Maybe this goes here, and this goes here.’ But the parts pretty much present themselves really quick.
“Sometimes I’ll use writing as a theoretical exorcise—I don’t mean (for) it to sound dry, I mean the song presents itself first, but I actually wanted to figure out what I did.”
While lyrics have escaped the records, eventually Rombalski favors the idea that there will be some soon. Like his playing, both picking and fingerstyle, the music has called for lyrics.
“I love the articulation of the pick and I work on that, but I love the fingerstyle element too. I want to work with lyricists, but it’s always (the) sounds, always rhythms. I go through fits sometimes just thinking about titles. I mean I really have to think about, ‘what’s that feelin?’ Sometimes like ‘Circle One,’ when I was playing it, it came to a thought of me that said, ‘when you’re in school and they give you tests, you’ve got to circle one.’ So it’s about choices. Sometime I was thinking of a friend of mine whose little girl was named Nadia, so I kind of was thinking of this delicate melody.”
While he figures to have around eight tracks for the new CD with no projected release date, the live element will spill into his group work now more than he’s ever experienced.
“With the way we explore and improvise a little bit, we’re going to have to do some live playing. It’s not going to be like all overdubbed. It’s going to have to be, ‘OK, let’s give it a shot.’ Be fearless, right?
“Taping us live is kind of the first step for us, because--you know how you sit back and you can get outside of yourself a little more, just listen to it from a distance?
Music is a document of the moment which Rombalski has finally come to terms with, both in life and in script.
“If you know you’re working at your craft, you’re practicing, you’re working at what you’re doing, there’s all these things that come. It’s like the planets being aligned—if you’ve had enough sleep, if you’ve eaten, you’re in the right frame of mind, personal things going on in your life, whatever, there’s all kinds of things that can affect your performance. I have to be kind to myself at times. There’s a lot of people that will judge you or will be more than happy to critique what you are and do. But you know what? You’re doing it! You’re the one doing it. To me, I can ride through some mistakes, because it’s one thing to sit there and just talk about it, but you know you’re a player. You’re doing it. It’s scary sometimes, but it makes you so happy too.”
Like many musicians past and present, Rombalski sometimes has found himself overwhelmed with a reality moment that brings his visions home.
“I was talking to someone and he said, ‘Your music’s your meditation.’ And I thought, ‘oh yeah, that’s right.’ So in a sense it’s kind of a devotional act, it’s not trying to get real far out there or anything, but there’s a part in you that just gets to connect. You try to do that in your daily life anyway, but there’s this thing. It’s humble, you lay it out there, you just do it. It’s a very personal and universal thing. It’s humbling.
“You start getting ‘you know it’s really fun, I’d like to have this or I’d like to have that, or I’d like to be at this point,’ or whatever—you know there’s nothing wrong with goals, they’re wonderful things, you know. But if you are going to take the journey of an inward thing and if you are going to spend the time searching for that, and you are going to spend the time trying to coalesce these little ideas and these things together, even if it’s just to amuse or if it’s to learn, or if it’s to elevate one’s soul or spirit, it’s act that you can energize one’s self with. You don’t have to worry what other people think. It’s the actual act itself is what you’re getting something from. I tell that to people too. It’s like, if you can be 1.--Easily amused by simple things, like a repetitive exercise over and over and over, which enters into a state which the brain starts to change a little bit and (2.) can you just be happy with the sheer act of playing. There’s places in the world where you can’t play music. They won’t let you play music. You can’t have an instrument. This is like a real honor to be able to play, for crying out loud.”
And the melody is as harmony inside music and in outside of life for the musician and his morals.
“You know how you go through certain periods in your life where you’re trying to balance and readjust and understand some of the things that happened to you, because inevitably it’s usually for the better anyway? But at the time you’re not understanding (as to why). So sometimes music is the only form I know to try to grapple with things in my life, good and bad.”
Rombalski’s goal is to live his life as his art.
You can transfer this wonderful connection that you achieve through music and then I can learn how to achieve that in other areas of my life. Whether or not it’s just conversations with people, with students, with friends, out in the world, whatever—that challenge is there. But what a wonderful thing to experience, that contact that then you can transfer to other areas…
“So isn’t it beautiful to have music to paint that poetry for us?”
Music is a document of the moment which Rombalski has finally come to terms with, both in life and in script.