Skip to main content

Day One Hundred Fifteen (Year Two)

Listening to a live stream of R.E.M.'s new career spanning best of on NPR.com as I write this.

In any process that is as long and drawn out as the one that is being chronicled by this blog, there are going to be high points and low points.  Ordinary days and watershed days.  Today felt like a watershed day.

I compared the two Berklee applications.  I was right, the first one had more to it.  There was a second sheet in the earlier app that had more musical characteristics and questions on it.  It gives me more of a chance to lay out the areas that I will need to focus on in order to put my best foot forward when I apply.

Other things that happened today:

1) I found the binder that I had intended to use to make the centerpiece of the project.  There's a skeleton of something there, but it's really thin right now.  It's something that I can definitely flesh out from there, and the exciting part of that is that I don't think it would take all that much time.  The playing/practicing part of it will take a lot of time & effort, but that's the exciting part.

2) I paged through the song binder a bit, trying to find a few more songs to record for this EP.  After going to work, it dawned on me that "Norwegian Wood" might be fun to try and track.  I'll give that one a shot at least.  I know for sure that there are a few other songs in that binder that will work out for this project.

Those were two big moments for me today, and I can only imagine that they will lead to bigger and better things.  More on this, and everything else, tomorrow.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day Three

Short one today. I've got a bunch of the DVDs that Guitar World has put out. Waded through those to see what I had, worked off of the lead guitar one. Just basic scales , but still a light place to begin. It was nice to just start loosening up my fingers again. Off from work tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get a lot of playing done. Said I'd mention the other project I'm hoping to finish this year. Back when I was living in WI, I started a hard rock band with a friend of mine. She was heavily influenced by Evanescence, and so, with her as vocalist, we started writing songs. We had written and demoed almost a full album's worth of music by the time I moved to IA, and had even purchased a P.A. in preparation for eventual gigs. We never did find a permanent drummer or bassist, so our demos sound very rough (and not nearly loud enough). I'd like to finish those songs, and make an EP of the 4 or 5 strongest, just as a way to put a cap on that project. More tom...

Day Three Hundred Fifty Seven (Year Seven)

Today was okay.  It ended up being quieter than I wanted it to be, but I got in a few things. 1.  I got the music from the car hauled in and sorted out in advance of my road trip to Dubuque for a little longer than a day.  I'm taking the Radiohead reissue with me for that, since I haven't gotten a chance to sit down with it yet. 2.  I'm also taking an empty notebook along with me, in the hopes that I might start to get some lyric ideas down on paper while I'm gone.  I watched some cool videos early this morning about the idea of writing all of the music before writing lyrics, and the way things are going that is looking like what's going on with me. 3.  I wish there had been more playing today, but I'm still feeling good about where things are sitting.  This next week needs to include a lot of writing.

Day Two Hundred Sixty Six (Year Six)

One of the biggest advantages of not getting all that much done this week is that it clues me in to what I need/want to take on vacation with me.  It's basically everything that went along with me when we left to go and dog sit on Monday night.  Granted, there are a few extra things I need to pack (the notebooks with the first two recording projects in them, for example), but that shouldn't be too hard to fit in. Most of the day tomorrow is full already, but there might be a bit of time in the evening (like there was today) to get into the studio.  Then, possibly a few hours on Sunday morning before we hit the road around noon. My shoulders have started to loosen up a bit from all of the insanity the last few weeks.  I'm ready to finally have an extended chance to focus on music next week.