About a month ago I found myself in a precarious situation. I hated my job. Hated it, and had felt that way for some time. I had been working in a high-volume, high-demand hospitality job which sucked 55 hours a week from me and, certainly worse, claimed all of my energies which I would have otherwise directed towards creative projects. I took pride in performing well at work so I wasn't comfortable phoning it in, which meant that I did my best but was so shagged at the end of the day that I was simply not fresh enough to work on my music.
Despite my best efforts I couldn't content myself to ignore my passion. Day after miserable day the ghost of my potential musical project haunted my waking hours and demanded an explanation for why I devoted myself to such unsatisfactory enterprises. One morning in May I made a rash decision, I quit my job on the spot. Key on the desk, walked out the door sort of quitting. The fear that ran through me as I drove home that day was suffocating. What would I do now? I had no backup plan whatsoever and no alternate source of income to cushion the fall. The ghost whispered in my ear that it would be alright.
I've been an active musician since I was about 20, moving from making girls swoon to acoustic versions of "Wonderwall" in dorm rooms to getting into full-band performances in bars and nightclubs. My greatest hope was that one day I would record an album of original material. This desire grew from a pipe dream into a passion I couldn't ignore as my songwriting continued to mature and quality recording technology became adaptable to laptop culture. In the winter of 2010 I spent about $500 on an assortment of devices and accessories which would give me everything I needed to record quality music in whatever space would fit my laptop. I spent the next year and a half working on fully fleshed demos and half-baked ideas which helped me hone my production skills and learn the parameters of the equipment. By the time I quit my job last monthI knew I was ready to make something substantial.
My respect for the album as an art form had come from my earliest exposure to music that I felt moved by. Some of the first records I connected with included "The Colour And The Shape" by Foo Fighters, Everclear's "Sparkle And Fade" and The Doors' self-titled album; records which comprised more than a collection of polished singles (as today's popular artists tend to release). These were works that displayed cohesion, songs and sensations which served each other instead of just themselves. This being the foundation of my musical admiring I grew to look down upon works with only a few substantial tracks or releases attempting to simply carry over the aesthetic from a previous effort. By the time I got to The Beatles in college and heard "Abbey Road", the path was clear. The album is king.
Of the many recording I had done in the past few years only a handful of them had remained in my good graces. Now that I had quite a lot of time on my hands I decided to embark upon a great adventure: record a song every day no matter what. I had a large backlog of completed but un-recorded compositions that I could dip into but I also challenged myself to try and write and record a song in the same day at least a few times as a sort of exercise. Beginning mid-May I began my recording marathon and am now within a few months of completing what will be my debut album, largely made up of material during this period.
What will follow here is an account of my writing/recording process, musings on technique, observations on home recording and easy-to-follow tips for anyone who wishes to do the same. You can also follow my progress as I move through the final processes leading up to the release of the album this summer.
Continue to check this blog as I chronicle my journey as an independent producer.
No comments:
Post a Comment