Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Ten (Year Two)

I got up somewhat early today.  It gave me a chance to do a little playing before I had to go to work.  The chief result of this playing was my discovering that I actually still liked the work I had gotten done last night.  That happens with me a lot, where I'll find an idea I like one moment, and then later discover that I don't like it half as much as I thought I did.  It's actually a chief reason why my lyrics are in a perpetual state of "undone."

The cool thing about this morning is that it represents progress from the last time I worked on songs for this project.  Last time, I woke up the next day and hated nearly everything I had been working on the day before. 

No, I think this time I've got myself a solid group of three or so ideas, with maybe a holdover from the previous writing session that still hasn't quite sorted itself out yet.  I know that leaves quite a bit of work still to be done, but in all fairness, I haven't had this much progress on anything for a solo project in a long, long time, so as long as it's working, I'll continue to take it for what it is: progress.  And I've still got a week and a half to go.  I admitted to myself a while back that I wasn't thinking everything would be recorded this month, and in a way, that has freed me up to make sure the musical ideas aren't just thrown together for the sake of having something.  I still need to work faster and find the good at a quicker pace if I'm going to get this done, but I want to have a record that sounds unique and creative at the same time, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

It's good.  It's working.  I didn't get as much done today as I could have, but tomorrow night should be a productive one for this, so that's exciting for me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Six (Year Four)

Today was the first official day of the second half of my "album-in-a-month" challenge. As for today's goals, I wanted to see what I could get done in regards to track order, and get at least a little bit of a start on the lyric writing process. I spent more time working on the track order question than I did on the lyrics today, but as a result of that, I ended up with something that I think will work in terms of order. I did sit with the notebook for a few minutes at the very end of the day, and got a solid starting line of lyric and some other ideas that I hope will be jumping off points for lyrics. What I'm thinking I might do, however, is switch my focus from the lyric writing part of the process directly to the recording part of the process.  That way, if I can get the music recorded and burned onto a CD, I can take the music with me in the car, and listen and try to see what images and thoughts the music brings up.  It's a tactic that has worked for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Three Hundred Fifty Nine (Year Three)

Finished up last night's project for the Start Experiment tonight.  It feels awesome to have the drums laid down for this first song.  It's amazing to me just how much more like music this progression sounds with a drum track behind it. Tonight's project is recording the bass line, which should go pretty smoothly, considering that it's already written... I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Granted, it took me about an hour to get the drums set up so the patterns were recorded in the right order.  Even with notes, these things take a lot of time, I guess. Two things dawned on me today that need sharing: 1) I haven't done much listening at all this week, except for what has happened in the car.  It's still Drive-By Truckers right now, but that needs to change tomorrow. and 2) There hasn't been a whole lot of work on the Buddy Holly tune in the last couple of days.  That needs to change tomorrow and Saturday if I'm going to feel good abou...
4 comments
Read more

Day Three Hundred Forty Two (Year Four)

Tonight was a slightly unfocused night in the studio. It was a night of acoustic stuff, but most of what I got accomplished involved tinkering with different songs by Jackie Greene and Johnny Cash.  If nothing else, I set up the next list of songs I want to figure out. Tomorrow night I need to start getting back to the Acoustic Goldmine book, as well.  Every time I sit down with the acoustic for an extended period of time, I reconnect with the emotional side of that instrument.  There's so much to learn still in that book, so much information designed to improve my playing.  I need to take better advantage of it. I know it's crazy, but I'm already looking forward to Friday.  I really need to spend a lot of the day in the studio.  Getting a weekday off of work is such a rare commodity.  I need to do a good job of using my time wisely. 
Post a Comment
Read more