Skip to main content

Day Thirty Eight (Year Six)

Today was supposed to be the day I got myself caught up on everything I feel so far behind the eight ball on.  And then I got called in on my day off.  Now, extra money is nice, mind you, but today it came at the price of a small slice of my sanity.

That said, I eventually managed to sneak away to the studio for a few minutes, and in those few minutes, I took a quick look at where the EP stands.  Here's what keeps getting to me: I know how close I am to being able to finish it off.  I know that what it would take is a day (or a good chunk of free time) in order to put those pieces together and come out the other end with something I can (at long last) start writing lyrics over.  Can I find that time?  Seemingly not right now, but that doesn't mean I won't keep fighting to have that breakthrough moment.

I sat and did a bit of listening tonight, too.  Nothing new that I've picked up lately, just some classic stuff that helped to work a bit of the stress out of my shoulders.  Not all of it, but enough that I can get some sleep without my mind being too restless.

I really hope tomorrow is a better day.

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 Three Hundred Sixty Three (Year Three)

Well, the second run of 8 days (i.e., the second song out of three) begins tomorrow morning.  I'm pretty sure that I've got the chord progression written for that one already, so it'll just be the tempo I'll need to hash out.  Feeling as good about the second song as I am, I spent the night tonight trying to figure out what the problem was in the verses of the song I've been working on for the last 8 days.  And if I'm not mistaken, I solved the problem.  A change in the order of chords here, another switcheroo there, and bang!  I like what I have now a whole lot better than what I had at the end of the day yesterday.  It means I'm going to have to change the bass line a bit as well, but I've already got thoughts on how that's going to go as well. Anne Lamott talks about "shitty first drafts" in her brilliant book on writing, Bird By Bird , and I think that what I ended up with this week was just that, a shitty first draft of a song.  So...