While Jennifer nods off on the couch to a DVD playing to no particularly attentive audience (I will admit, perhaps not a context particularly conducive to the creative process) I dust of the DS-10. It's the twentieth and I vaguely decided to do the RPM Challenge project. If you're reading this near the time it was written that profile should be notable in its complete emptiness. I see to my chagrin also that they either lost or I never properly transmitted my second attempt at the project, last year's Bootstrap Gospel, which is a shame, because it is a lot easier to listen to than the one they have, solvet saeclum in favilla. Which is not saying a lot as that album is almost unlistenable. I am probably the only person in the world who has listened to it in full, I am without question the only one who has done so more than twice.
The Korg goes a good ways deeper than I have previously intuited, mocking some of the absurd on-the-fly production techniques I came up with, having failed to grasp the appropriate techniques of multitrack sequencing. After more than a year I finally succumb to reading the manual.
But the forays into composition are painful, simply painful, so unrewarding. If the final production were really tight it would be one thing. But I know it won't be, it will be another slack, looping mess. And I just don't have time for that. Nor do I feel up to dusting off my 17 horribly clichéd chord progressions to produce another shaky singer-songwriter set accompanied by monotonous strains from a second-rate acoustic guitar. Finally, I don't think I can cull another decent set out of GarageBand's prerecorded loops and that's another time consuming process I'm pretty sick of. So either I'll have to renege this year or do what I've long threatened to and record a whole album a capella.
A Capella is hard too though, although not as hard for me as trying to compose and make music. It strikes me at last that the only way the music could ever go anywhere is collaboration. I can see myself getting my signing to the next level, I remain despite everything wholly committed to writing the lyrics. My songs. But I can't make the music well enough. I've made a lot of product but at the end of the day it's just not good enough.
Searching for others is a large and daunting step though. It's been a very long time since I tried to play with anyone and life is so much more complicated now. I really don't know what I'll do. If anything. Not for tonight, anyway. I put aside the DSi and spent some time listening to my strange personal catalog and transcribing songs from the current handwritten book. A pedestrian task but it has to be done if the things are going to get uploaded. It is an interesting way to get to know the songs again. Will they ever have a life outside of their books? Do they need one?
You can read an explanation of the origin of these lyrics here
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