Troubled waters

I still feel like this song writing project has gone downhill, and it's not gettign better yet. I have to admit that I think I'm totally blocked. On Saturday I had the afternoon free, and I thought I could work on some stuff and get caught up before heading out of town again - work on the tune I skipped, get an accompaniment for the lyrics I wrote last week down, and maybe get a good start on this week's song. Unfortunately, writing has become such a chore that I actually spent the afternoon doing chores (laundry, cleaning the apartment, etc.) to avoid my hobby.

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I did a little bit of recording Sunday evening after the Steelers game, and feffed about last night and this morning before work so hopefully I'll get a tune out this week and not fall further behind, but I'm just so unmotivated right now. I can't say precisely why that is, but I think this is exactly why I never wanted to go into music as a profession. It seems that once there are deadlines and it becomes work, the joy of making music is destroyed for me. Would I love to just follow my own whim and have that be enough to support myself? Sure, but it doesn't work that way.

A few years ago, in weighing the pros and cons of which direction to head with my life, I determined that if I were to try and make a career of music, I'd need to devote a lot of time to things outside of writing music. Beyond the basics like touring and performing which were never my favorite things, and which would have put a lot of strain on my then just-budding relationship, I saw the way the world was turning with the advent of the internet. I knew that musicians would need to be more disciplined than ever and spend more and more of their time promoting themselves. Labels were being marginalized and while the advantage was that anyone could release thier own music, the tough part was that there'd be no funding or promotion and that would all have to come from the artist as well as the music. That just didn't appeal to me.

I decided I'd rather keep it a hobby, something to enjoy and do when the spirit moves me, and if the internet lets me put it out there to share with others, that's great, but I'm not going to go pushing it and draining my energy away from the fun parts to chase some pipe dream that would ultimately kill the fun. That just didn't make sense to me. I don't want to be famous or anything, and the music business seemed to have become obsessed with fame over everything else. This shouldn't be surprising - it's not just music, but our entire culture. In a world of reality TV where everyone thinks they're entitled to 15 minutes, who is there to truly appreciate music for music sake anymore?

So I decided on a regular 9-5 life with music as my passion on the side. A hobby that stays a hobby to keep it authentic to me, to keep it from becoming corrupted or something. And maybe that's the wall I've hit with this yearlong project. If this project has confirmed anything, it's that I made a good decision when I went into library work instead of trying to make a career in music. Because lately just thinking about having to write a song makes me sick, and if this were my job, my life support, well, that would be very sad indeed.

Don't get me wrong - there are times that I can't stand my job, and I wish I could just quit and write songs full time. But ultimately that's not what I want because I think that would just ruin my realtionship with music. Maybe someday I'll figure out a way to perform my songs live by myself, or I'll finally put together a group to do it, or maybe even get someone else to play my music, but it will always be for the fun of the music, and the moment things get in the way of that, I know myself well enough to know that I'll lose interest.

I have friends who are committed to creating something bigger, and while I admire what they do and their ambitions, I know that it's not for me. I couldn't take getting bogged down in running a band, lining up gigs, managing personnel, doing finances. I suppose I've known that since Some People (a trio I played with in college that lasted less than a year), and it factored into my losing interest in the group. There were certain personality conflicts and arguments over the direction of the music, but what prevented me from getting back into it was that I just wanted to practice and jam more than anything else. And recording was fun, but only for the sake of experimenting with the possibilities, not as an means to getting gigs or whatever.

I loved the spontaneaity of creating music, but I wasn't interested in exporting it in any way. Gigging just seems to complicate things. Turning improvisation into a show, having the limits of playing in a certain place and time, up on a stage in front of people instead of getting down with people - it's just not me I guess. I don't want to entertain anybody; I'd rather commune with them.

I've thought about this a lot, and my ideal live show would have the entire audience playing music while I try to organize the chaos. I'd have some kind of MIDI controller like these placed in the crowd (preferably wireless versions though). They'd be synced to my loops and affet the loops in different ways, and I'd exhort the audience to use them to make noise while I try to take what they're doing and reign it in to some kind of communal music. Who knows? If the audience got good enough, I could just jump in and enjoy it with them. There'd be no one on stage, but the entire audience, we'd all be making the sounds and enjoying it together without the need for musical training. I'd rather be a facilitator for music than a performer I guess.

Anyway, I've gotten off topic. What I'm really saying is that at the moment, the blog is not moving forward. I'm trying to tread water as best I can. I don't want this idea to fall short and be incomplete. But at the moment, it's just not happening, and I'm not sure I can force it. Sometimes these things just need to work themselves out.


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Week #39 - Envy

Music has been a struggle lately. Playing the guitar feels like a chore. Heck, even listening to music lately feels like something I have to slog through for some unknown reason. Needless to say it's been another unproductive week on the music writing front.

On the plus side, I found myself thinking about something the other day and realized it's been forever since I just sat and thought about anything. So I wrote the following words. The title is a phrase that just popped into my head, and as for the rest, I hear a melody to it, but I haven't been able to work out a song from it yet. So in lieu of a recording this week, here are some lyrics (I think it still counts as a song):

Mixed Up Disco In The Face

My mind is flickering
Like a long unused light
Just switched on for the first time
In a long, long while tonight.

Strange snippets and phrases
Keep popping up in my head -
Brought out of nowhere to show me
That I might not mean what I said.

I used to think I had something to say,
But the older I get, the more I didn't know yesterday.
Oh, to be certain, to know that I know,
But no matter how hard I believe, it doesn't make it so.


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Week #37 - Compassion

Yes, indeed, this is finally last week's piece. I am officially a week behind now. I'd really hoped to post twice this week and catch up, but it didn't happen, and the next month is incredibly busy so I'll be lucky to not fall further behind. Hopefully, by the end of the year I'll have time to fill in the gap

Even with the extra time, I didn't get it as far along as I'd hoped. I started on lyrics, but couldn't finish them, and mixing got away from em as I kept tinkering with the arrangement and adding a bunch of parts which I ultimately scrapped. So in the end it's just another rought sketch of a song...



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Description:

This song started out on acoustic guitar though I'd moved to the 12-string by the time I was ready to record. I progammed the beat and then just recorded a bunch of variations on the riffs and chord progressions I had. I cut these up and played with them until I got a decent arrangement. I doubled the 12-string and panned the two parts hard left and right, then added the synth bass. Once I had those in place I recorded a few passes of lead guitar the electric that I also cut up and placed over the top. Finally, though I didn't really give myself time to work on mixing the individual tracks, I spruced it up a tad with a simple mastering chain on the main output.

Tools:

Ableton Live 7
Presonus FireStudio
Audio Technica AT2020 condenser mics
sE lectronics Reflexion Filter
Washburn Oscar Schmidt 12-string guitar
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Studio Devil AMP
Togu Audio Line TAL-Bassline
de la Mancha Erratic 2
PSPaudioware Vintage Warmer 2
IK Multimedia T-RackS 3 Brickwall Limiter
IK Multimedia T-Racks 3 Linear Phase EQ

Notes:

- Chord progression:
Verse - Dm A Bb | x6 | Bb | x2
Bridge - Dm | F | Bb | A |
Chorus - Dm F | C Bb | x4
Middle 8 - Dm | Dm | Bb | Bb | F | F | A | Bb C |

- Tempo: 105bpm

- Key/Scale: it's basically F with a sharp 5th thrown in liberally on the lead part. The progressions are all centered around Dm, D Aeolian specifically, but I used the C# in the lead part to give it a diferent vibe.

- There's not much to say about the mix. As it was only a rough sketch for a song it didn't seem to warrant a lot of time making it sound great. Other than choosing a tone for the lead guitar, I basically just set the levels and threw the following over the master channel: a Linear Phase EQ with a slight shelving boost at 2kHz, Vintage Warmer with the Mix First Aid preset, and brickwall limiter set to give it a 3dB boost.


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Running a bit late

My week off was a lot of fun. San Francisco is a really great city, and the only bad part was that we could have used another week to really take it in fully. We had a bit of a travel snafu on the way out, but after that it was smooth sailing, (mostly) good eating, and a laid back, relaxing exploration of new environs.

While it did reenergize me slightly in a general sense, it unfortunately had no impact on inspiring new music. I'm still in the same rut I've been for awhile. Partly it was going back to work I think - between readjusting to the time change and having a lot to catch up on at work, I was left pretty worn out every evening and didn't have much energy to play music. I debated stretching this hiatus into a longer break, but then I ended up starting a song anyway. It's just that it didn't get very far along, and I'm really sick of posting half-ass songwriting attempts. So I'm going to work on it for a few more days before I share it.

I do hope to stay on schedule and get two songs posted by the end of the next week, but for now you can read the beginning of my write-up on the trip on my livejournal.

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