And sometimes when I'm falling flying or tumbling in turmoil I say whoa so this is what she means, she means we're bouncing into Graceland. I’m not really sure what Paul Simon meant by bouncing into Graceland, and from what I’ve read he didn’t exactly know either, but the flying and the tumbling in turmoil I understand. It has been over a month since I last wrote and this month, even more than the last, has been the biggest freefalling, flying, tumbling month I’ve probably had in my entire life. Disorientation, depression, self-alienation. Conviction, lost then found, lost again… Motivation found on the ground, on a walk or on the way to work, in very small golden morsels, only to be picked up and then immediately dropped, slipped through my fingers.
Yet I don’t feel that I can productively write more about the freefall than to simply say that it happened, and that it still continues to happen to a certain extent. There is nothing to be said without it seeming cliché and solipsistic. The truth. I suffer existential crises like everyone else. We wake up in the morning, confronted by all the possibilities, all the contingencies of our existence. And worst and best of all, we are confronted by our ability to choose what to do. Out of all the options, the projects, the friends, the books, the podcasts, the degrees, the papers, the closets to be cleaned, the trip to plan, the jobs to be applied for and considered… And, ringing in our ears, “No excuses” (“..no exit..” a distant echo), “Responsibility” “Freedom” and other Sartrean banner slogans. Or perhaps it takes a more 1980’s EST motivational training tone, “take responsibility for your actions” or “only you can create your personal transformation!” And it is in this state of choice and responsibility that I have been lingering, stuck, aware of my responsibility, my freedom, my lack of excuses, yet not being able to choose. Not being able to say, “Yes! This is the project I endorse!”
There is so much more to be said about how much this state of not choosing sucks, how emotionally and physically and socially draining it is, depressing. But I wont go there now, because in all likelihood, you, dear reader friend, if you are indeed one of my friends, angsty as you probably are if you are one of my friends, already know. And I have no real complaints after all, right? No real wars to wage, babies to feed, conflicts to negotiate, essential problems to solve. No, just me and my own internal conflicts and blockages. Spoiled and comatose, you SELF-CENTERED BITCH!!!! I console myself somewhat with the words of people I meet. A guy at my last show: “Yeah, the first year after college totally kicked my ass.” Yeah, totally getting my ass kicked, but in the most pansy childish way to get one’s ass kicked. It just goes back to overeducation, and holy jesus that’s a hard sickness to conquer.
As I was writing my thesis I concluded that I wanted to be a female music artist who broke a whole host of stereotypes about women who play music. I wanted to have my own band (instead of being a tool for someone else’s), play an instrument (instead of just singing), write my own music (instead of performing someone else’s), and produce myself (instead of going into some studio as a half-decent singer songwriter and have some dude with fancy equipment make me sound like I don’t suck). I feel like I am living up to most of these ideals I set forth for myself, but I still have my uneasy feelings about how the album is getting produced. Matt is the producer of this album, no doubt. He knows more about mixing than I do (or, more importantly, cares to know more about it) and has a much better ear for all things mix-related. Reverb, delay, compression, EQ, staging. These are elements of music I can hear if I bring my attention to them, but they are not what I primarily pay attention to. I think about the song structure, the arrangements, the harmonies, and now, more than I used to, the lyrics. But those other elements of production are certainly all elements of music that I understand. After taking electronic music last year, building my own synthesizers from scratch, applying envelopes and filters to these synthesizers using Reaktor, I get it. But I definitely don’t get industry standards. The “expected” amounts of reverb and compression on industry quality albums. To me this all seems to historically arbitrary—it’s not really about the music, just about priming the music, dressing it up in a way that is palatable to a contemporary audience. Kind of like how Schoenberg started to introduce atonality in the language of romantic music. So perhaps catering to industry standards when it comes to reverb is my historically contingent version of Schoenberg presenting atonality in the compositional language of Brahms?! It was worth a shot….
Nevertheless, I still have moments where I feel like the typical female artist, being emotional, tapping into her creative inner self to create art, haphazardly putting it together with the available technology, while the man, the producer, comes in and “makes it sound good.” When I think of it this way all of my feminist anger boils over and I don’t feel like doing anything, and I get angry at Matt. Yesterday I even hit him, much harder than I had expected to, half joking half seriously. Matt doesn’t always help, because for the most part he sees it like this as well. Of course, for him it’s not a matter of gender. He just thinks that it would be difficult for any artist, male or female, to try to compose, arrange, record AND mix his own music, and do all aspects well. Having someone else there to make the mixes of your creative babies is just a plain old good idea. And Matt is really good at it, so I really need to let go of my angst and anger for the time being.
Still, these feelings are there and I acknowledge that. And the only way I can think to remedy them is to perhaps take on a song on the album to fully produce myself. And then to console myself with the prospect of producing another artist in the future—someone else who is just getting started who needs a third party listener to rework the tracks.
This past week we’ve had another drummer in the studio, and his energy and style are really refreshing and enjoyable. Still, seeing the way he and Matt interact, friends, collaborators, getting excited about making music together, makes me miss having female artists to collaborate with. Not that I don’t feel that I can have this relationship with men, it’s just not at readily comfortable. I definitely felt comfortable with the guys in The Done For, and with Aaron. Perhaps the sex jokes have something to do with that. There’s really no way to avoid the ‘your mom’ jokes when it comes to “trying out a couple different positions” with the mics. COME ON dudes!!! I can’t help but turn into a bitch around that, defensive and equally abrasive.
In another arena, I have been slowly but surely revising my thesis for the Music and the Arts in Action journal. For a long time I didn’t want to think about it at all because I was so burned out on my thesis, but finally one of the editors contacted me and asked if I was still interested in and planning on resubmitting my revisions. As I rethink my ideas, I realize how much more there is to explore in the topic and how underdeveloped some of my ideas were. Or at least, how limited they were by the initial theory I decided to use. One of the biggest comments from the editors about my paper was that I talk exclusively about musical knowledge as cultural capital, (which informs social status, power, etc.) but very little about the technicalities of the music itself. Does gender in music have a sonic component? If so, what is it?
The truth is that I didn’t go into this element because it’s kind of a touchy topic for me. If a potential interviewee for my study played an instrument in a rock band, according to my definition of a rock band (more than one person, amplified instruments, usually a drummer etc.), then she counted as being a more or less successful participant in local level rock music making and qualified for the study. But the fact of the matter is that I really didn’t like the music most of these women made, and that in most cases they weren’t as good as their male counterparts—their music was simpler and they didn’t play as well. Some of them were really awesome and I genuinely liked their music, but for the most part, yes, I have to admit it, I didn’t! Of course, I attribute this to a number of factors, like less playing time and fewer people to practice with. Women for the most part started playing in their early twenties, instead of their early teens, and had very little encouragement for all the reasons I illuminate in my thesis…. Still! There’s the reason, out on the table.
As I play more music with other people and as I slowly turn my gaze towards my project in Peru, I realize that I do want to incorporate more music analysis. But that is then and this is now. I might consider submitting the current article to a different journal if MAiA insists on more music analysis. Something like Socioanthrpology, Ethnomusicology, or the Journal of Popular Music.
I leave now to work on my newest song, Rabbit Hole, which incorporates the original string quartet audio recording of my piece Rebel Princess. Not really sure how the orchestration for this part is going to work out, but I have the inclination to record some of my own drum parts… so, I now set to work…
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sit Down
Apparently there is a quote from Simone De Beauvoir’s Pyrrhus and Cinéas that goes like this: “A man alone in the world would be paralyzed by the manifest vanity of all his goals.” I know this from reading ‘Sex and Philosophy: Rethinking De Beauvoir and Sartre’ by Kate and Edward Fullbrook, a book by a couple about a couple that Patrick and I are reading as a couple in our new investigation of otherness and role model couples. Following the quote by De Beauvoir, the Fullbrook’s offer this elaboration, “ To reduce and make bearable the contingency of one’s existence requires the validation by others of one’s projects.” And as I meander my way farther and farther away from the safe arms of New College and the institution of education in general, the validation-provider extraordinaire, I am feeling the paralysis creep in. Days going by with half, a third, a quarter the productivity I shelled out daily in Florida because I am, yes, paralyzed by the abyss of possibilities before me. Some of them are appealing, of course, but none of them provide the same allure and gratification as those possibilities set forth, solicited, authorized by the teacher, the boss, the institution, the grant foundation.
I am recalling, now finally understanding, the No Face song “Overeducated” I used to sing and perform at the beginning of college. The guy who wrote it dropped out after my first year, I imagine as a result of feeling the way he sang about in his song. And the problem with overeducation is not all the skills and talents and possibilities I have accumulated, or the pieces of paper, the connections, the grant monies. No, these are symptoms of being educated. Good symptoms, at that. The symptoms of overeducation creep up slowly, on rainy mornings and sleepless evenings. You find yourself craving an assignment, a task to be completed for someone. Your interests are accumulating, blossoming exponentially, yet...yet somehow the motivation to conquer them all, to do them justice, is missing! Gone into the bottomless hole of sleeping in, rummaging through the fridge, dawdling in your room while looking for the right collection of items to take on an afternoon stroll to the library. “No, it’s there!” you say, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to sew, and finish off The Will to Power, and produce an album, and now I have the time and the energy to do it!” But despite all the energizing self-talk, you are down with overeduation, and you have to admit to yourself that nothing gets you going like that 7 AM deadline for your weekly philosophy seminar paper. Nothing gets you going at all, really, without the promise of punishment. Or more pointedly, the sweet opposite, the promise of beautifully satisfying approval. Ohhhhh, yeah. Give me that approval.
So here I am feeling paralyzed, overeducated. I am not going to complain too much though, because despite however much I am supported by Existentialism and Simone De Beauvoir when I speak of the anguish of existence, there really is nothing more disgustingly privileged than whining about having too much education and being overwhelmed by the endless possibilities offered by the world. Please! Still, there are some important questions to be asked by all of us who are currently overeducated or who are at risk of contracting overeducation. First of all, since none of us who are currently infected with overeducation care to continue in this state of torpor, how can we overcome the primary symptom of overeducation? Namely, how do we get the approval we need for our projects without the support of our beloved institution, whatever it might have been?
I know there are many possible answers here, but I’ll just throw out a few. There is always the “the only approval you need is from yourself, march to the beat of your own drum” type of answer, but sticking with De Beauvoir for the time being I’m going to just go ahead and reject that one right now. Turning to our self as the sole judge of our projects just doesn’t cut it. We are social, we are hierarchical, and typically we engage in projects that have to do with other people, at least on some level. De Beauvoir wrote books she expected people to read, my friend Jim tests isotopes in ants so that other scientists can do their jobs better, my mom teaches yoga for her students. So, ok, fine, yes, I need to genuinely enjoy what I am doing, but that just isn’t getting me out of the bed on those deliciously rainy Arkansas mornings. There have to be others. Paralysis is unavoidable otherwise. The next obvious answer is to find another group of people who will give you approval; the ones that will appreciate the fruits of your efforts, those who the thought of which makes your projects seem valid and worthwhile. This option is a form of setting up a new institution of sorts for yourself; a new approval-dealer.
And it is within the second option that I find myself dwelling, in particular concerning the question “Why am I making this album?” Sure, I enjoy making music. But certainly not all the time. And recently I haven’t been that into it at all. So when the moments of sheer joy at making music dissipate, I am left with the question: “Why make an album?” I am no longer able to say: “well, I should finish it to get a good evaluation” or “might as well finish it up to get the degree" and I certainly am not in the mood for "well, it will look good on my resume." Instead I am starting to form this vague notion of people out there in the world who would receive the music. The people who might actually really enjoy listening to my music, my sometimes unusual musical choices, the genre combinations, the uncompromising lyrics. My imaginary group of ideal listeners has to be my new institution. Those people who do actually want to hear about existential crises and Ravel piano licks all in one song. The people who will like my politically apathetic tirades; the people, in short, who feel that they can express a part of themselves through my genuine self-expression. So I guess it’s really a combination between the beat of my own drum and the institution. The institution of people with metronomes at the same tempo as mine, at least close enough.
There is so much more to be said about the process, but this should be enough of a clue that it has been a month of more fretting and living in my own head than converting sound waves into digital memories. Still, progress has been made and will continue to be made. TV shows have been recorded, shows played, songs written, parts notated. I have a new song I like a lot called Sit Down. Sit down to know where I started, sit down to know where I fall.... I’ve noticed that now that I am out of school I spend a lot less time sitting and thinking that I used to. Now sitting down, to write, to think, to focus, is extremely cathartic and centering. Without sitting down every once in a while I find myself getting tight and light headed and out of breath, caught up in the fragments of my own mind and my disoriented and waffling projects.
I am recalling, now finally understanding, the No Face song “Overeducated” I used to sing and perform at the beginning of college. The guy who wrote it dropped out after my first year, I imagine as a result of feeling the way he sang about in his song. And the problem with overeducation is not all the skills and talents and possibilities I have accumulated, or the pieces of paper, the connections, the grant monies. No, these are symptoms of being educated. Good symptoms, at that. The symptoms of overeducation creep up slowly, on rainy mornings and sleepless evenings. You find yourself craving an assignment, a task to be completed for someone. Your interests are accumulating, blossoming exponentially, yet...yet somehow the motivation to conquer them all, to do them justice, is missing! Gone into the bottomless hole of sleeping in, rummaging through the fridge, dawdling in your room while looking for the right collection of items to take on an afternoon stroll to the library. “No, it’s there!” you say, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to sew, and finish off The Will to Power, and produce an album, and now I have the time and the energy to do it!” But despite all the energizing self-talk, you are down with overeduation, and you have to admit to yourself that nothing gets you going like that 7 AM deadline for your weekly philosophy seminar paper. Nothing gets you going at all, really, without the promise of punishment. Or more pointedly, the sweet opposite, the promise of beautifully satisfying approval. Ohhhhh, yeah. Give me that approval.
So here I am feeling paralyzed, overeducated. I am not going to complain too much though, because despite however much I am supported by Existentialism and Simone De Beauvoir when I speak of the anguish of existence, there really is nothing more disgustingly privileged than whining about having too much education and being overwhelmed by the endless possibilities offered by the world. Please! Still, there are some important questions to be asked by all of us who are currently overeducated or who are at risk of contracting overeducation. First of all, since none of us who are currently infected with overeducation care to continue in this state of torpor, how can we overcome the primary symptom of overeducation? Namely, how do we get the approval we need for our projects without the support of our beloved institution, whatever it might have been?
I know there are many possible answers here, but I’ll just throw out a few. There is always the “the only approval you need is from yourself, march to the beat of your own drum” type of answer, but sticking with De Beauvoir for the time being I’m going to just go ahead and reject that one right now. Turning to our self as the sole judge of our projects just doesn’t cut it. We are social, we are hierarchical, and typically we engage in projects that have to do with other people, at least on some level. De Beauvoir wrote books she expected people to read, my friend Jim tests isotopes in ants so that other scientists can do their jobs better, my mom teaches yoga for her students. So, ok, fine, yes, I need to genuinely enjoy what I am doing, but that just isn’t getting me out of the bed on those deliciously rainy Arkansas mornings. There have to be others. Paralysis is unavoidable otherwise. The next obvious answer is to find another group of people who will give you approval; the ones that will appreciate the fruits of your efforts, those who the thought of which makes your projects seem valid and worthwhile. This option is a form of setting up a new institution of sorts for yourself; a new approval-dealer.
And it is within the second option that I find myself dwelling, in particular concerning the question “Why am I making this album?” Sure, I enjoy making music. But certainly not all the time. And recently I haven’t been that into it at all. So when the moments of sheer joy at making music dissipate, I am left with the question: “Why make an album?” I am no longer able to say: “well, I should finish it to get a good evaluation” or “might as well finish it up to get the degree" and I certainly am not in the mood for "well, it will look good on my resume." Instead I am starting to form this vague notion of people out there in the world who would receive the music. The people who might actually really enjoy listening to my music, my sometimes unusual musical choices, the genre combinations, the uncompromising lyrics. My imaginary group of ideal listeners has to be my new institution. Those people who do actually want to hear about existential crises and Ravel piano licks all in one song. The people who will like my politically apathetic tirades; the people, in short, who feel that they can express a part of themselves through my genuine self-expression. So I guess it’s really a combination between the beat of my own drum and the institution. The institution of people with metronomes at the same tempo as mine, at least close enough.
There is so much more to be said about the process, but this should be enough of a clue that it has been a month of more fretting and living in my own head than converting sound waves into digital memories. Still, progress has been made and will continue to be made. TV shows have been recorded, shows played, songs written, parts notated. I have a new song I like a lot called Sit Down. Sit down to know where I started, sit down to know where I fall.... I’ve noticed that now that I am out of school I spend a lot less time sitting and thinking that I used to. Now sitting down, to write, to think, to focus, is extremely cathartic and centering. Without sitting down every once in a while I find myself getting tight and light headed and out of breath, caught up in the fragments of my own mind and my disoriented and waffling projects.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
a new strategy
Another week in the life of album recording and a new strategy in place. It’s called the Annie Clark method; the treat Logic as Finale method; the Adele maps stuff out with midi and then we go back in the replace all the midi with real instruments method.
At the beginning of the week I was feeling extremely frustrated because I felt handicapped by not having drum parts recorded. I felt that I couldn’t move forward if the drums weren’t recorded when the drums are supposed to be the first instrument you record according to all audio mixing books and gurus. So instead of just stagnating I came up with a new idea—record and arrange all my songs using scratch tracks, rough approximations of all the parts I want using midi instruments and some real audio, but with the right arrangements, structures, and tempo, so that Matt can just sit in with these pre-arranged tracks and drop in the drum parts when he has some free time in his day. This way he has a better feel for the song (because all the parts are there, even if in a shitty form) and I don’t have to wait for him to record drums to keep arranging. Moreover, this way I don’t have to be around when he is recording drums, which makes him nervous. Which makes anyone nervous. There nothing quite as intimidating as someone sitting outside the sound booth with headphones noticing every error or missed transition, especially when you are playing on their music.
But even with the new method in place I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that still lies in front of me. Fifteen songs (well, more like twelve now) to arrange with scratch tracks, re-record, and then re-arrange, mix, master. Whoa. That’s a lot of music, a lot of recording and rerecording. A lot of getting musicians together, a lot of parts to be notated, printed, distributed. On top of this we are still going strong with Adele and the Matts. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for last week’s show, we got a great little interview in the Fayetteville Freeweekly this week which makes us seem so legit. Check it out.
Still, Matt and I were talking about this yesterday over quesadillas before our second wedding gig of the year at Magnolia Botanical Garden’s in Springdale. Where can Adele and the Matts go? Maybe we should drop the trio idea and move into playing music from the album. Maybe we should just form a new band and use our opportunities for promotion to promote that—something that will actually have an album with it, could possibly have a future. We need to have a band powwow this week, before we are filmed for the local television series Front Row next week that features local northwest Arkansas musicians, to hash it out.
This week I am going to see St. Vincent and Andrew Bird play in Columbia, MO, and hopefully hopefully I will get to talk to Annie Clark in person. I interviewed her almost a year ago for my thesis, Chicks with Picks, and I really want to ask her some follow up questions, both about her role as a female artists as she gains more and more recognition and about her recording process. I saw an interview with her in which she described a process very similar to the strategy I outlined above, and I want to talk to her about it more in detail. But perhaps just a pipe dream. She might be too big at this point.
I am already getting down about not having any female musicians to collaborate with. Halley has been singing with us and I enjoy that a lot, and my hope is to start incorporating her more into the songwriting and arranging process. She doesn’t have a lot of confidence writing music, but I know that she has the capacity (she came up with some of the best vocal parts for Ancient Avenue) and I hope to draw it out of her more. Still, it would be nice to have a girl bass player or guitar play to work with as well. Lee Ellen, move back! There is just something different about the way I communicate with other female musicians that is missing with men. Maybe it’s because I’m not always wondering in the back of my mind if they are interested in me (though…I don’t really know why it makes a difference. But it seems to).
Well, to the scratch board now. Working on a new song called “The Parting” which has a really cool Ravel-inspired violin break in the middle. I notated the part out for the violin player who is going to work with me; turns out that there are seven parts. A violin septet for one player. Hmmmmm…..
At the beginning of the week I was feeling extremely frustrated because I felt handicapped by not having drum parts recorded. I felt that I couldn’t move forward if the drums weren’t recorded when the drums are supposed to be the first instrument you record according to all audio mixing books and gurus. So instead of just stagnating I came up with a new idea—record and arrange all my songs using scratch tracks, rough approximations of all the parts I want using midi instruments and some real audio, but with the right arrangements, structures, and tempo, so that Matt can just sit in with these pre-arranged tracks and drop in the drum parts when he has some free time in his day. This way he has a better feel for the song (because all the parts are there, even if in a shitty form) and I don’t have to wait for him to record drums to keep arranging. Moreover, this way I don’t have to be around when he is recording drums, which makes him nervous. Which makes anyone nervous. There nothing quite as intimidating as someone sitting outside the sound booth with headphones noticing every error or missed transition, especially when you are playing on their music.
But even with the new method in place I am overwhelmed by the amount of work that still lies in front of me. Fifteen songs (well, more like twelve now) to arrange with scratch tracks, re-record, and then re-arrange, mix, master. Whoa. That’s a lot of music, a lot of recording and rerecording. A lot of getting musicians together, a lot of parts to be notated, printed, distributed. On top of this we are still going strong with Adele and the Matts. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for last week’s show, we got a great little interview in the Fayetteville Freeweekly this week which makes us seem so legit. Check it out.
Still, Matt and I were talking about this yesterday over quesadillas before our second wedding gig of the year at Magnolia Botanical Garden’s in Springdale. Where can Adele and the Matts go? Maybe we should drop the trio idea and move into playing music from the album. Maybe we should just form a new band and use our opportunities for promotion to promote that—something that will actually have an album with it, could possibly have a future. We need to have a band powwow this week, before we are filmed for the local television series Front Row next week that features local northwest Arkansas musicians, to hash it out.
This week I am going to see St. Vincent and Andrew Bird play in Columbia, MO, and hopefully hopefully I will get to talk to Annie Clark in person. I interviewed her almost a year ago for my thesis, Chicks with Picks, and I really want to ask her some follow up questions, both about her role as a female artists as she gains more and more recognition and about her recording process. I saw an interview with her in which she described a process very similar to the strategy I outlined above, and I want to talk to her about it more in detail. But perhaps just a pipe dream. She might be too big at this point.
I am already getting down about not having any female musicians to collaborate with. Halley has been singing with us and I enjoy that a lot, and my hope is to start incorporating her more into the songwriting and arranging process. She doesn’t have a lot of confidence writing music, but I know that she has the capacity (she came up with some of the best vocal parts for Ancient Avenue) and I hope to draw it out of her more. Still, it would be nice to have a girl bass player or guitar play to work with as well. Lee Ellen, move back! There is just something different about the way I communicate with other female musicians that is missing with men. Maybe it’s because I’m not always wondering in the back of my mind if they are interested in me (though…I don’t really know why it makes a difference. But it seems to).
Well, to the scratch board now. Working on a new song called “The Parting” which has a really cool Ravel-inspired violin break in the middle. I notated the part out for the violin player who is going to work with me; turns out that there are seven parts. A violin septet for one player. Hmmmmm…..
Sunday, September 20, 2009
stuck in the pig sooie
We drive into central Arkansas as the herds of SUVs, donning red flags flapping in the wind like floppy ears and black and red tattoos, flock to Fayetteville for the mighty hog gathering. The coalescence of hog fans young and old, coming together to call them hogs with wooooooooo pig sooie and drink themselves silly and lament the loss of our forever failing team. I am with a caravan of musicians and musician’s girlfriends and we are heading to the lodge at Mt. Magazine, the highest point in Arkasnas, for a wedding. Our first gig as a new wedding band, ripping off the 60s Show set list from Matt Jone’s 60’s Soul Review I played in last summer. It’s a good-paying and steady gig for not very much effort—I think the song with the most chords is Two Step by Dave Matthews, which tells you something about the rest of the music.
The wedding itself was pretty unexceptional from a personal standpoint, but pretty intriguing from an anthropological one. It was a wham bam thank you ma’am ceremony, literally five minutes from front to back, in which the vows consisted of “I love you” and the preacher said “Um” at least half a dozen times. The rest was by the book—the protocol toast, cake-eating pictures, the band (us). There was no real collective excitement or energy, all just mandatory hoop-jumping. We started our set well but things went down hill quickly as the Razorback game got going and almost everyone there deserted us to go watch it on the big screen tv in the bar downstairs. Hogs over a live band, I mean, I really shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
The post-wedding festivities were what you might expect, with one salient exception. Arkansas still has dry counties, and Mt. Magazine happens to be in one of them. Dry county, you say? Yes, entire counties where it is illegal to buy and sell alcohol, except by permit in private clubs. So here we were, drinking and carousing in hotel rooms like fourteen-year-olds, sneaking from room to room so that the night cop wont catch us. It was a bit of a thrill, a return to that rule-breaking thirteen year old excitement, but not exactly how I want to party at a wedding.
But in general the gig seems promising. Good pay with quality free parties just about every other weekend. I also like the idea of being a fly on the wall at a variety of weddings I would never normally be invited to; just to refine my own preferences and to really get a feel for the ceremonial part of one of our most entrenched institutions.
Playing in this wedding gig is just one of the many activities in my life that is pulling my attention away from the album. I started working again at Arsaga’s, I am mentoring, continuing with my dance class, taking a dance class, doing physical training with a personal trainer, playing gigs with Adele an the Matts, reading with Jen and Halley and doing projects with Patrick. I have been thinking about my seemingly inexorable need to fill my life with activities, and my knee jerk reason so far has been that I believe that I am more productive when I am scheduled. Part of me feels that I will actually get more done on the album more quickly if I have definitive windows of time in which to work on it. Hopefully this mentality proves to be true, because so far I have been putting so much effort into setting up this structure in my life that I have been neglecting the album. The only significant work I’ve done since I last wrote was to record the drum parts to Evil Times multiple times, which we will have to do again because we changed the structure with the addition of more horn parts, and attempted to record piano parts. Unfortunately after recording these parts I realized that I really needed to test the piano mic set up, so I scratched those takes (which was already horrible and completely frustrating because it’s so damn hard to play!) and ran about twenty different mic tests, with different positions, levels, and caps. Now I finally have a mic set up for the baby grand that I really like, but unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. This week the plan is to track the drums and piano for Ancient Avenue, Evil Times, and Palmetto. Then perhaps by Sunday we can get Matt Lewis in to record bass. Fingers crossed. The new goal for finishing capturing audio is the third week in November, which would give us about a month to mix and master and still get it done by Christmas. Like I said, fingers crossed, tightly. The real, no kidding deadline, of course, is March first. Hopefully we’ll find a happy medium between the two.
Friday’s show at Scarpino’s was a new performing low point for me. It was the first show I played where half way through I just didn’t want to continue. My whole body wanted to walk off stage and never perform again. Get up, walk out, fuck you, fuck everyone, I hate this. But of course, I couldn’t. I was glued to my bench, I kept playing, smiling, entertaining, counting, singing. It was really an out of body experience. And the reasons were many. I was pissed off at the band. We hadn’t rehearsed. I felt unprepared. The sound situation was extremely unsatisfactory, poor vocals, low piano, the drums were piercingly loud. People came late, left early. By the end I had a throbbing headache and all I could think was “who am I kidding wanting to be a music artist this obviously isn’t going anywhere and you are wasting your time and money on this album.” And why experience all this stress and anxiety?
Now I feel better. I remember my role models. The years and years of struggle Tori had, her first album, Y Kant Tori Read, which was a complete and total failure. I remember that I have a lot going for me. The time to do a project like this. The people who want to play with me. Gary and Jim played horns with us on Friday and Halley sang for next to nothing and it really sounded good despite our lack of decent rehearsal time. It all boils down to the larger dilemma: making good music takes an extremely huge amount of time and dedication and hard work and creativity, and there is very little promise of success. No certainty. It is times like this that I want to climb back into the cozy womb of academia and snuggle in. Back in the institution where hard work and brilliance is sure to pay off, with frequent pats on the back and applause from the people we pay to praise us. These are the times that I start to browse the websites for promising grad programs... “maybe I’ll just go right back to school when I get back from Peru...that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” School is my binky, my baby blanket, my mommy come hold me because I’m afraid of the real world.
We’ll see what happens.
The wedding itself was pretty unexceptional from a personal standpoint, but pretty intriguing from an anthropological one. It was a wham bam thank you ma’am ceremony, literally five minutes from front to back, in which the vows consisted of “I love you” and the preacher said “Um” at least half a dozen times. The rest was by the book—the protocol toast, cake-eating pictures, the band (us). There was no real collective excitement or energy, all just mandatory hoop-jumping. We started our set well but things went down hill quickly as the Razorback game got going and almost everyone there deserted us to go watch it on the big screen tv in the bar downstairs. Hogs over a live band, I mean, I really shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
The post-wedding festivities were what you might expect, with one salient exception. Arkansas still has dry counties, and Mt. Magazine happens to be in one of them. Dry county, you say? Yes, entire counties where it is illegal to buy and sell alcohol, except by permit in private clubs. So here we were, drinking and carousing in hotel rooms like fourteen-year-olds, sneaking from room to room so that the night cop wont catch us. It was a bit of a thrill, a return to that rule-breaking thirteen year old excitement, but not exactly how I want to party at a wedding.
But in general the gig seems promising. Good pay with quality free parties just about every other weekend. I also like the idea of being a fly on the wall at a variety of weddings I would never normally be invited to; just to refine my own preferences and to really get a feel for the ceremonial part of one of our most entrenched institutions.
Playing in this wedding gig is just one of the many activities in my life that is pulling my attention away from the album. I started working again at Arsaga’s, I am mentoring, continuing with my dance class, taking a dance class, doing physical training with a personal trainer, playing gigs with Adele an the Matts, reading with Jen and Halley and doing projects with Patrick. I have been thinking about my seemingly inexorable need to fill my life with activities, and my knee jerk reason so far has been that I believe that I am more productive when I am scheduled. Part of me feels that I will actually get more done on the album more quickly if I have definitive windows of time in which to work on it. Hopefully this mentality proves to be true, because so far I have been putting so much effort into setting up this structure in my life that I have been neglecting the album. The only significant work I’ve done since I last wrote was to record the drum parts to Evil Times multiple times, which we will have to do again because we changed the structure with the addition of more horn parts, and attempted to record piano parts. Unfortunately after recording these parts I realized that I really needed to test the piano mic set up, so I scratched those takes (which was already horrible and completely frustrating because it’s so damn hard to play!) and ran about twenty different mic tests, with different positions, levels, and caps. Now I finally have a mic set up for the baby grand that I really like, but unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. This week the plan is to track the drums and piano for Ancient Avenue, Evil Times, and Palmetto. Then perhaps by Sunday we can get Matt Lewis in to record bass. Fingers crossed. The new goal for finishing capturing audio is the third week in November, which would give us about a month to mix and master and still get it done by Christmas. Like I said, fingers crossed, tightly. The real, no kidding deadline, of course, is March first. Hopefully we’ll find a happy medium between the two.
Friday’s show at Scarpino’s was a new performing low point for me. It was the first show I played where half way through I just didn’t want to continue. My whole body wanted to walk off stage and never perform again. Get up, walk out, fuck you, fuck everyone, I hate this. But of course, I couldn’t. I was glued to my bench, I kept playing, smiling, entertaining, counting, singing. It was really an out of body experience. And the reasons were many. I was pissed off at the band. We hadn’t rehearsed. I felt unprepared. The sound situation was extremely unsatisfactory, poor vocals, low piano, the drums were piercingly loud. People came late, left early. By the end I had a throbbing headache and all I could think was “who am I kidding wanting to be a music artist this obviously isn’t going anywhere and you are wasting your time and money on this album.” And why experience all this stress and anxiety?
Now I feel better. I remember my role models. The years and years of struggle Tori had, her first album, Y Kant Tori Read, which was a complete and total failure. I remember that I have a lot going for me. The time to do a project like this. The people who want to play with me. Gary and Jim played horns with us on Friday and Halley sang for next to nothing and it really sounded good despite our lack of decent rehearsal time. It all boils down to the larger dilemma: making good music takes an extremely huge amount of time and dedication and hard work and creativity, and there is very little promise of success. No certainty. It is times like this that I want to climb back into the cozy womb of academia and snuggle in. Back in the institution where hard work and brilliance is sure to pay off, with frequent pats on the back and applause from the people we pay to praise us. These are the times that I start to browse the websites for promising grad programs... “maybe I’ll just go right back to school when I get back from Peru...that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” School is my binky, my baby blanket, my mommy come hold me because I’m afraid of the real world.
We’ll see what happens.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Stomach Drop
The studio is finally one hundred percent no kidding finished. The drum overhead mics, that last piece of equipment we were waiting on, arrived yesterday from Massachusetts where they had been catching beautiful frequencies in someone else’s home studio. They are a matched pair of Oktava condenser mics, with accompanying XLR cables, nice ones, and stands, and work especially well as drum overheads. We got an incredible deal on them on Ebay.
I was in California last weekend visiting my grandpa in Half Moon Bay, and while I was gone Matt took the opportunity to try out the studio and get a better feel for the equipment by recording another local artist, Michael Tisdale, who was looking for a three song demo to promote his stuff. So far the songs are coming out well and it is giving Matt a really good opportunity to familiarize himself with levels, which he is then diligently teaching me. At first I felt a little violated by these guys being in my studio, using my equipment, without me being there, and a little insecure about my male counterpart learning and experimenting and then teaching me second hand, but I am getting over it as part of the game of dividing labor, whatever gender you are. I am just making sure that I do in fact learn what he has learned, and don’t feel in the dark about any steps in the process.
Now that the studio is complete, I feel disoriented and insecure. It’s like we’ve reached the top of the roller coaster and now the bottom of my stomach has dropped out and I am petrified as the imminent drop off gets under way. Now I have all the tools for creation at my fingertips, I’ve spent a good chunk of my savings, and now all the pressure is on me to create. Here I am suspended, overwhelmed by technological capacity and opportunities and avenues and decisions. And with all this I have to create something GOOD. Not just sit down in front of Garageband and dick around until I find something catchy, but really create with all my mind and emotion and knowledge. Fuck!!! And it can be debilitating. Right now the hardest part is just getting started. Where do I start? At the piano? At the computer? In my room alone with a pad of paper and pencil? On Youtube watching other artists? With my iPod dancing around to Bjork in the park? All of the above? Ah, and then I can’t make a decision and I’ve already arrived at another obligation in the day and I have to stop working and I haven’t found that sweet spot—that moment of complete absorption in the creative process that sucks you in and alters your mind like a good drug.
Typically my method for moving forward in moments like this is just to work. Sit down and get to it. Set the timer, hang up some hand-crafted posters motivational posters on the wall that say something like “good ideas take a lot of hard work, don’t get down if they don’t come right away” and “action ameliorates anxiety” and “quit the guilt” and “you are not important, get over yourself” (I think those have all been on my wall at some point throughout the last four years). And I think this kind of method will work again, but of course this moment in time is couples with my whole life getting uprooted and changing and turning upside down, so I am starting to reconsider the old habits, the old methods of working, the old paradigms of motivation and achievement. So I can’t just sticky-tac up the good old slogans and put my nose to it. There is more resistance right now, and it stems from the underlying question: Why am I creating at all? Why do I feel the need to make music? To make this album? What are the real reasons?
And I have some trouble identifying the reasons. Part of it is that I feel some kind of obligation to the music I’ve created over the past few years, like I have a responsibility to capture it and do it justice, just for the sake of preservation, dissemination. I would feel like I had let so much work and creativity and community go if I didn’t do this. Then there is the personal desire, my own will to power, to have something solid and beautiful and marketable of my own creativity that I can seed out into the world and be recognized for. Then there is my desire to create that just comes from this underlying inexplicable desire to produce, just produce. I can’t necessarily pinpoint the origin of this feeling, but I’ve always had it. This inexorable drive towards projects.
And what about the audience? Do I think about them when I create or when I think about creating? Somewhat. My motto for many years has just been, “Make what you like and your audience will sort itself out.” And this is the motto I think I will stick to for the most part, but when you are embarking on a project of this scope, I think that it is also wise to think more carefully about your audience. Is there something you can do to entice them into your music, something that can ease the transition between what they know and like and what I do and make, even if it is slightly different?
The music I will make for this album fits within the broad category of popular music, and within that category I think that it fits in the genre of pop. But my music tends to push the boundaries of pop a little bit—strange lyrics, some odd chord progressions, unanticipated metrical and key changes. And this can alienate people. How do I bridge the gap then? I think the strategy is to have some pop songs that are just straightforwardly poppy, even if the lyrics deviate from the traditional topics—love, sex, love, sex, getting sad (about love and sex), hmmmm… fantasy? Getting pissed off? And then of course producing the music really well, which can make just about any song appealing (think Britney Spears, whose music is very well produced and very catchy as a result). So taking this idea, we are working on a new song called Fire Escape, which is actually an adaptation of a song I used to play with The Done For called The Wendy Bashant Blues, and which I had also arranged for full orchestra under the title Wu Wei when I was a third year at New College. The song is about a sex house on the edge of some unnamed town where the visitors participate in intense choreographed sadistic sex games for days at a time. Throughout the course of the song, though, the house catches on fire and everyone inside it, tied up and contorted, can’t escape and burns down in fiery orgasmic fantasy. The words deviate a bit from traditional pop topics, but the music itself is very catchy and straightforward and danceable. It still needs quite a bit of work, but I think this is one of those songs that can link the album to traditional norms of pop music.
I still feel a little more technically inept than Matt Todd, who seems to just have more interest in understanding the ins and outs of how things are working technically. My interest in these things comes, but only as I am trying to use them and not beforehand. The issue I am seeking to overcome right now is feeling like I can’t work without him, which is probably just a product of us collaborating so much recently. Today I hope to overcome this mental block and set to work on arrangements without him.
My new goal for releasing the album is around Christmas. This seems a little ambitious, but it would be so wise for marketing purposes that I am going to shoot for it.
Matt and I are on edge today because I am disappointing him by not participating in some plans we made a while ago. I am responsible for leading him to believe that I would be there today. Guilty? Who knows. I know that I woke up this morning with the overwhelming desire to be alone and to complete some projects that have been lingering. All I will say here is that the downs of all close relationships are inevitable.
This has put both of us out today, but I hope to get started on some of my lingering projects nevertheless and hopefully find some moments of flow.
On other fronts of my life, I taught my first free modern dance class at the yoga center yesterday and had five students of different levels, a good number I think for a first class. It was my first experience teaching a dance class and it proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Especially when the students are first learning routines, it is important for the teacher to do the movements with them, but repeating things while trying to teach and speak and be coherent is much more tiring than just taking a class and thinking about how the movement works. You really have to be firing on all cylinders, mental and physical.
I was in California last weekend visiting my grandpa in Half Moon Bay, and while I was gone Matt took the opportunity to try out the studio and get a better feel for the equipment by recording another local artist, Michael Tisdale, who was looking for a three song demo to promote his stuff. So far the songs are coming out well and it is giving Matt a really good opportunity to familiarize himself with levels, which he is then diligently teaching me. At first I felt a little violated by these guys being in my studio, using my equipment, without me being there, and a little insecure about my male counterpart learning and experimenting and then teaching me second hand, but I am getting over it as part of the game of dividing labor, whatever gender you are. I am just making sure that I do in fact learn what he has learned, and don’t feel in the dark about any steps in the process.
Now that the studio is complete, I feel disoriented and insecure. It’s like we’ve reached the top of the roller coaster and now the bottom of my stomach has dropped out and I am petrified as the imminent drop off gets under way. Now I have all the tools for creation at my fingertips, I’ve spent a good chunk of my savings, and now all the pressure is on me to create. Here I am suspended, overwhelmed by technological capacity and opportunities and avenues and decisions. And with all this I have to create something GOOD. Not just sit down in front of Garageband and dick around until I find something catchy, but really create with all my mind and emotion and knowledge. Fuck!!! And it can be debilitating. Right now the hardest part is just getting started. Where do I start? At the piano? At the computer? In my room alone with a pad of paper and pencil? On Youtube watching other artists? With my iPod dancing around to Bjork in the park? All of the above? Ah, and then I can’t make a decision and I’ve already arrived at another obligation in the day and I have to stop working and I haven’t found that sweet spot—that moment of complete absorption in the creative process that sucks you in and alters your mind like a good drug.
Typically my method for moving forward in moments like this is just to work. Sit down and get to it. Set the timer, hang up some hand-crafted posters motivational posters on the wall that say something like “good ideas take a lot of hard work, don’t get down if they don’t come right away” and “action ameliorates anxiety” and “quit the guilt” and “you are not important, get over yourself” (I think those have all been on my wall at some point throughout the last four years). And I think this kind of method will work again, but of course this moment in time is couples with my whole life getting uprooted and changing and turning upside down, so I am starting to reconsider the old habits, the old methods of working, the old paradigms of motivation and achievement. So I can’t just sticky-tac up the good old slogans and put my nose to it. There is more resistance right now, and it stems from the underlying question: Why am I creating at all? Why do I feel the need to make music? To make this album? What are the real reasons?
And I have some trouble identifying the reasons. Part of it is that I feel some kind of obligation to the music I’ve created over the past few years, like I have a responsibility to capture it and do it justice, just for the sake of preservation, dissemination. I would feel like I had let so much work and creativity and community go if I didn’t do this. Then there is the personal desire, my own will to power, to have something solid and beautiful and marketable of my own creativity that I can seed out into the world and be recognized for. Then there is my desire to create that just comes from this underlying inexplicable desire to produce, just produce. I can’t necessarily pinpoint the origin of this feeling, but I’ve always had it. This inexorable drive towards projects.
And what about the audience? Do I think about them when I create or when I think about creating? Somewhat. My motto for many years has just been, “Make what you like and your audience will sort itself out.” And this is the motto I think I will stick to for the most part, but when you are embarking on a project of this scope, I think that it is also wise to think more carefully about your audience. Is there something you can do to entice them into your music, something that can ease the transition between what they know and like and what I do and make, even if it is slightly different?
The music I will make for this album fits within the broad category of popular music, and within that category I think that it fits in the genre of pop. But my music tends to push the boundaries of pop a little bit—strange lyrics, some odd chord progressions, unanticipated metrical and key changes. And this can alienate people. How do I bridge the gap then? I think the strategy is to have some pop songs that are just straightforwardly poppy, even if the lyrics deviate from the traditional topics—love, sex, love, sex, getting sad (about love and sex), hmmmm… fantasy? Getting pissed off? And then of course producing the music really well, which can make just about any song appealing (think Britney Spears, whose music is very well produced and very catchy as a result). So taking this idea, we are working on a new song called Fire Escape, which is actually an adaptation of a song I used to play with The Done For called The Wendy Bashant Blues, and which I had also arranged for full orchestra under the title Wu Wei when I was a third year at New College. The song is about a sex house on the edge of some unnamed town where the visitors participate in intense choreographed sadistic sex games for days at a time. Throughout the course of the song, though, the house catches on fire and everyone inside it, tied up and contorted, can’t escape and burns down in fiery orgasmic fantasy. The words deviate a bit from traditional pop topics, but the music itself is very catchy and straightforward and danceable. It still needs quite a bit of work, but I think this is one of those songs that can link the album to traditional norms of pop music.
I still feel a little more technically inept than Matt Todd, who seems to just have more interest in understanding the ins and outs of how things are working technically. My interest in these things comes, but only as I am trying to use them and not beforehand. The issue I am seeking to overcome right now is feeling like I can’t work without him, which is probably just a product of us collaborating so much recently. Today I hope to overcome this mental block and set to work on arrangements without him.
My new goal for releasing the album is around Christmas. This seems a little ambitious, but it would be so wise for marketing purposes that I am going to shoot for it.
Matt and I are on edge today because I am disappointing him by not participating in some plans we made a while ago. I am responsible for leading him to believe that I would be there today. Guilty? Who knows. I know that I woke up this morning with the overwhelming desire to be alone and to complete some projects that have been lingering. All I will say here is that the downs of all close relationships are inevitable.
This has put both of us out today, but I hope to get started on some of my lingering projects nevertheless and hopefully find some moments of flow.
On other fronts of my life, I taught my first free modern dance class at the yoga center yesterday and had five students of different levels, a good number I think for a first class. It was my first experience teaching a dance class and it proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Especially when the students are first learning routines, it is important for the teacher to do the movements with them, but repeating things while trying to teach and speak and be coherent is much more tiring than just taking a class and thinking about how the movement works. You really have to be firing on all cylinders, mental and physical.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Lista
‘Seventeen cold showers couldn’t wash away. Save me, save me, save me, save me from what I want.’ Every consonant, every bass drum hit, every pluck of Annie Clark’s guitar on her album Actor is perfectly clear, warm, through my new KRK Rokit 8 monitor speakers. And her doe-eyed orange album is cover clear and huge on my new 23-inch computer monitor.
We finished constructing the studio yesterday, August 21st, right on schedule. The room is an extra room in the back of my mom’s house in Fayetteville. Originally the space was about the opposite of the perfect place for recording music—high ceilings, hardwood floors, lots of windows, an extra door. Two weeks later, with the help of my dad and recording cohort Matt, we have constructed a room within this larger room, with wood, blankets, quilts, and bedspreads lining the walls along with Auralex acoustic foam and Audimute aborption blankets. I have to admit that it’s probably the coolest, most elaborate, loungiest fort I’ve ever built. My eight-year-old self, with her blankets enclosing the TV in the family room, would be totally jealous right now. Outside the isolation room we have our mixing console set up with the computer, monitors, and the Firestudio. It’s pretty cool, I have to admit. The only step left now is to purchase or somehow get a hold of a pack of drum mics, a few extra cables, and a good pair of mixing headphones. (Accepting donations).
Here is the pattern of the past two weeks: determine the next piece of studio equipment to buy, spend hours on the internet reading reviews and honing in on choices, going to Guitar Center, fretting, sweating, wavering, deciding, changing minds, deciding again, pulling out credit cards, swiping, sighing. Then coming home, screwing, hanging, organizing. This pattern has made me very aware of how unacquainted with contemporary Capitalism I have become. First, there are the big retail stores like Best Buy and Guitar Center, with their army of blue shirted helpers scanning the spacious white room with its buzzing fluorescent lights and shiny screens for your confused look, your slight scratch of the head. The signal that says: “hmmm, do I buy this one or that one?” And there they are, at your side, ready with answers you don’t need to the wrong questions and pointing you towards the slightly more expensive silver-plated version of that fire wire cable because you know real Mac users always go with silver-plated cables, really, much better performance. Then there is the game of reading reviews online. Funny how almost everything has five stars one some of these websites. And then some are much too technical. The dB level frequency curve dynamic range large diaphragm parabolic infinity electron sound wave number number number. Contemporary capitalism in a nutshell: reading and manipulating human psychology and sifting through heaps and heaps of information. Liberal arts didn’t exactly prepare me.
And of course, at Guitar Center my female discrimination sensors get amped up to the highest setting as soon as I walk into the Pro Audio section. ‘Surely they think I’m a completely technologically inept girl’ becomes my default stance towards the world and the slightest remark or smirk from one of the dudes working there (yes, they are dudes) sparks the most uncalled for shift into bitch mode. They were, in reality, not discriminating against me at all (any human with a credit card can eat at this counter seems to me their motto), and perhaps allowed me to test out the mics and monitors longer that they might have typically been inclined to. But I’m working on it. There are prices to be paid for hyper-sensitivity and I’m willing to pay them.
So $4,600, sweat, mood swings, dozens of receipts stuffed into my wallet, hangovers, crying spells, bike rides, and a few unexpected phone conversations and medical surprises later, I have a recording studio in my house. We laid the first vocal tracks, using the beautiful Bluebird last night, and everything is ahhhhhh about to get started. Hooray! There is still an open invitation to anyone I’ve ever collaborated with to come to Arkansas and lay down a track or two. The Ozarks are beautiful, I promise, and the fort studio is even cooler.
I think that the key to making an album is having awesome people to collaborate with, and I am so lucky to have people like Matt Todd and my dad and everyone else who is going to be helping with this CD around to make it happen. Muchisimas Gracias.
On another note, Adele and the Matts secured three shows at Scarpino’s and are about to start practicing again for that. I also got to meet Claudia Berson, one of the best key-ticklers in the ‘ville and might take lessons with her. I watched her play some jazz last Tuesday and got pretty inspired once I resurfaced from my hole of self-deprecation and depression-by-comparison. She does have thirty years on me after all…
Sunday, August 16, 2009
You got me spendin'
I made the decision to produce this album without really thinking through how many dollars it would cost me, and this week has been a process of coming to terms with just how many dollars I will be parting with over the next few weeks as I piece together this studio.
Last week I finally settled the Logic vs. Protools debate, coming down eventually on the side of Logic. There are long lists of pros and cons for each program. Logic is just a better program, more updatable, better sound quality, more versatile, amazing midi, but it only runs on mac, which means that I have to spend a lot of money on a computer only half as good as the computer I could build if I went with a pc. Protools would run on the awesome pc I would build, but protools is the biggest capitalist scam in the recording industry, tying their software to their own hardware, which is monstrously overpriced and poor quality. Plus the cheep version of Protools only supports 32 tracks. 32 tracks???!!!
So now my bank account is $3,000 lighter and I have the highest end 15 inch Macbook Pro (along with my free ipod), the Firestudio Tube 16 channel audio interface, a new 23 inch monitor, all on the way to my doorstep. Right now this money is coming out of the college savings I didn’t end up spending on my education because I went to the oh so quirky public liberal arts college in Florida and my now being a Florida resident. What?
The truth is that I don’t know how someone could possibly try to produce their own album without some kind of significant savings like this. This process is extremely time-consuming and working as a musician (which is my only other job at the moment) pays next to nothing. Adele and the Matts had their first show of the season last Friday at Arsaga’s on Crossover and made $200 whole dollars, which got evenly distributed in $67 portions. Great money for a show at a small coffee shop but only covering the cost of...maybe the cheapest metal windscreen for a condenser mic? It just doesn’t cut it.
Today my dad is helping me enclose part of the new Adele and the Matt’s practice room to create the recording isolation chamber. Looks like it is going to end up being a 7X6X8 foot space, partially outlined by the existing walls and partially outlined with the makeshift 2X4 walls we are putting up today. Yesterday we bought an enormous package of acoustic foam and are probably going to do the rest of the job with insulated fiberglass and wool blankets.
I still have to research and buy mics and new monitor speakers, some new XLR cables, and a package of drum mics, but other than that things are really coming together and I’m excited. It will the realization of a dream I’ve had for many years to finally be able to get out of bed at any hour of the night and walk into my very own recording studio in the next room.
Other than this project I have been trying to get out to see other local bands play. So far my favs have been Opal Fly and the Swatters, The Rox, and The Good Fear. Some pretty awesome local music going down in Fayettenam these days. Tomorrow Matt and I are going to distribute our press kit to more local venues. Given the awesome turnout to our first show I have confidence that we can develop a pretty good local following.
Last week I finally settled the Logic vs. Protools debate, coming down eventually on the side of Logic. There are long lists of pros and cons for each program. Logic is just a better program, more updatable, better sound quality, more versatile, amazing midi, but it only runs on mac, which means that I have to spend a lot of money on a computer only half as good as the computer I could build if I went with a pc. Protools would run on the awesome pc I would build, but protools is the biggest capitalist scam in the recording industry, tying their software to their own hardware, which is monstrously overpriced and poor quality. Plus the cheep version of Protools only supports 32 tracks. 32 tracks???!!!
So now my bank account is $3,000 lighter and I have the highest end 15 inch Macbook Pro (along with my free ipod), the Firestudio Tube 16 channel audio interface, a new 23 inch monitor, all on the way to my doorstep. Right now this money is coming out of the college savings I didn’t end up spending on my education because I went to the oh so quirky public liberal arts college in Florida and my now being a Florida resident. What?
The truth is that I don’t know how someone could possibly try to produce their own album without some kind of significant savings like this. This process is extremely time-consuming and working as a musician (which is my only other job at the moment) pays next to nothing. Adele and the Matts had their first show of the season last Friday at Arsaga’s on Crossover and made $200 whole dollars, which got evenly distributed in $67 portions. Great money for a show at a small coffee shop but only covering the cost of...maybe the cheapest metal windscreen for a condenser mic? It just doesn’t cut it.
Today my dad is helping me enclose part of the new Adele and the Matt’s practice room to create the recording isolation chamber. Looks like it is going to end up being a 7X6X8 foot space, partially outlined by the existing walls and partially outlined with the makeshift 2X4 walls we are putting up today. Yesterday we bought an enormous package of acoustic foam and are probably going to do the rest of the job with insulated fiberglass and wool blankets.
I still have to research and buy mics and new monitor speakers, some new XLR cables, and a package of drum mics, but other than that things are really coming together and I’m excited. It will the realization of a dream I’ve had for many years to finally be able to get out of bed at any hour of the night and walk into my very own recording studio in the next room.
Other than this project I have been trying to get out to see other local bands play. So far my favs have been Opal Fly and the Swatters, The Rox, and The Good Fear. Some pretty awesome local music going down in Fayettenam these days. Tomorrow Matt and I are going to distribute our press kit to more local venues. Given the awesome turnout to our first show I have confidence that we can develop a pretty good local following.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Task
My task: To record an album of original music in the seven months I have before I leave for Peru in March. August to March. In that time I have to build a computer, a functional recording and production space, spend lots of money,teach the instrumentalists their parts, record, mix, master, record, mix, master. All the while playing with my trio, Adele in the Matts, getting gigs, promoting myself, and somehow managing to have a somewhat normal life on top of that.
And what will I do here? Document it. The ups and downs, the frustrations, the triumphs, and insightful and not so insightful observations about being an artist, a woman, a fresh-out-of college idealist.... enjoy.
And what will I do here? Document it. The ups and downs, the frustrations, the triumphs, and insightful and not so insightful observations about being an artist, a woman, a fresh-out-of college idealist.... enjoy.
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