The Light of Day

Commenting

Recently someone told me in an email that they weren’t sure how to leave comments on this blog. I’d been wondering if the theme was confusing anyone; it may seem obvious to us blogosphere addicts, but for the rest of the world (say, for example, my mum), I think I need to make an adjustment to the theme soon. Edit 11:46 PM: Done.

In the meantime, if you’re among the confused, the number next to the title is how many comments there are, and clicking on it will take you to them.

I also think I should create a separate web presence, for people who might like my work, but aren’t necessarily interested in the mental process behind every eighth note. I’m not sure what that would be like, but now that you know how to leave a comment, you can share your ideas with me.

Quick plea to performing songwriters

If you perform covers and originals, please stop actually using the word “originals” (I have to work on this too). It attaches a stigma to your music. Present your music with the presumption of legitimacy that it deserves. Try this: at your show, don’t even tell them which songs are which. The focus is on performance, not songwriting. If someone asks about a particular song, “I wrote that” or “George wrote that” works fine. But in the energy and atmosphere of a live show, the experience will blur all the material into one overall vibe for most people; people don’t really latch onto songwriting until they’ve heard something a few times in their home or car.

Also, stop using the phrases “shameless plug” and/or “shameless self-promotion”. They were self-effacingly funny the first few times, but now that they’re commonplace, they come off like a desperate, passive aggressive sales pitch. Furthermore, it’s like starting sentences with with “I would just like to say that…”; they’re extra words that add no value for anybody. The DJ on the radio isn’t “shamelessly plugging” Black Sabbath. He just says “here’s Black Sabbath” and puts it on. Just say what needs to be said — “we’re blahblahblah, we’re at blahblahblah.com, our CD is over there (or better yet, refer to it by title instead of “our CD”), thanks for coming” — and trim off the fat.

Trust that your music has value of its own, independent of your salesmanship. It’s okay to be polite and show appreciation to your listeners, but there’s no need to reinforce the notion that your music is on a “lower rung” by repeatedly reminding the audience that you really really hope they’ll go to your website, and oh gosh you’d be so grateful if they’d please consider buying a CD because it’s so cheap.

Please copy the above plea and pass it along. Let’s all stop acting like wussies and present our music with the simple confidence it deserves.

I have a small audience, but I prepare for a large audience. I produce my recordings as if people will be picking apart at every detail and appreciating the extra care I put into them. I write posts assuming that people are interested. (Sometimes I’m okay with the small numbers and have more difficulty with the delay between creation and feedback — but of course larger numbers would shorten that delay.) Occasionally I have mini-breakdowns where I cry, throw fits, and question the worth of my existence, but then I get back on the horse and keep riding.

Validation is addictive, but not instructive. Commercially successful artists like to thank their audience for supposedly “making them what they are”, but the fact is, the audience didn’t pick out the chords or fuss over the lyrics. That has to be done alone, by the artist, in a void where he has no immediate feedback from anywhere but his gut, no matter how big of a star he is. Start making peace with that now, because although you say you’d love to be in a situation where your worst failure was going from an album selling 4 million copies to an album selling only 400,000 copies, that’s rejection by 3,600,000 fans. I haven’t experienced that, but it probably stings a bit.

You’re always going to be likening yourself to someone and differentiating yourself from someone else, so please, for all of us, help to rotate the line of differentiation so that it doesn’t fall squarely between independent and signed artists. So they have stars on their bellies and you don’t. Big deal. You’re not as different from them as you think you are, so stop playing up your “indieness” and just focus on being kickass.

(Dismounting soapbox and nodding politely to scattered applause)

More final hour lyric tweaking

In case you ever have a need for it, I just downloaded Finale Notepad 2008 to make that little sheet music sketch in the middle. It’s free. I usually only use notation to sketch out bits that deviate a little from the rest of the song or get a little fancy. I was going to write a little more about it, but I started feeling angry just thinking about it. I’ve heard one too many hostile, pro-ignorance arguments and statements, almost to the point of making me feel like I have to apologize for knowing how to read, and I think it’s a sad reflection on our society. Granted, most of the music I listen to is by people who don’t know how to read, but in those cases there’s usually a George Martin, or a Ron Geesin, or a Michael Kamen…

(If you’re one of the people who read this blog, you’re not one of the people I’m angry at, don’t worry.)

So you want to make an album? (part 24)

Where’s installment #23? As of now, it’s a draft with just a title. But suddenly I’m on a roll with this one, which I think would make for a good closing chapter in the book.

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 24: In soviet Russia… so your album wants to make YOU?

I have a lot of respect for the mind, the ego, and humans as individuals, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend either shutting off your mental faculties or belittling yourself while trying to produce an entire album. But as I’ve hinted at throughout this series, it’s important to differentiate between the work of your ego (important as that is), and the valuable contributions from the mysterious “everything else that is”. You could be the best surfer in California, but good luck telling the waves when to roll in. Likewise, when the inspiration hits you to make an album, you can accept or reject the challenge, but you are not the challenger.

A lot of insight can come from simple reversals of perspective. We do it with our pets all the time. We say our cats own us. This isn’t a lie, it’s just a different way of seeing something. In a similar way, as recording artists, or as artists of any kind, it’s good once in a while to remember that our music and art is creating us. (And when we release an album, it’s really releasing us.)

Try as hard as you like to skip past the awkwardness of “first album syndrome” — nobody ever has, and nobody ever will. It doesn’t mean you suck, or even that the album sucks (not totally, anyway). But it will look, sound, and most importantly, smell like a first album. The more you fight this, the more it will fight you.

So the question is not, “are you going to make that particular album?” — the question is, are you going to become a person who makes albums? Because what that first album will achieve, what it will succeed at, is re-shaping you. If you’re starting out, that’s not what you want to hear, and it’s not what I wanted to hear, and as I wasn’t willing to listen, why should you be willing either? I admire and identify with your determination, but ultimately, tough tapioca.

Oh, it will have its bits here and there where it transcends its own naïvety. Heck, if you pound your head against the studio wall enough times, you very well may increase the number of moments in which it achives such transcendent heights during its 40 to 55 minute debut. Sure, Led Zeppelin had a strong first album, but Jimmy Page was in a band before that and had plenty of session experience. It’s all ongoing. This obsession with The Album sometimes tends to make us forget we’ve been “creating” since birth and possibly before that, and the only distinction is that we’re now establishing a frame to better define our current creations. We’re saying, of what we’d be creating anyway, this is the first song, this is the last song, and these are the songs between them.

Yet even if you have plenty of experience writing or playing, the seemingly simple act of establishing that frame for the first time will throw a shiny new wrench into every aspect of your creative process. It’s like you and your muse were a happy husband and wife, and suddenly the recording studio is your high-maintenance mother in law who has just decided to move in. The dynamic suddenly shifts, and everything needs to be re-balanced.

If it makes you any less apprehensive, remember, you can always rewrite, er, uh, reframe history later. The earliest album of mine that I would even consider re-releasing in its original form — or rather, “consider being re-released by” (don’t forget to play with those perspectives) — was one that I finished in 1996. So from an outside perspective, that album will look and smell like a first album, and it does have its particular “firstness” to it. But, I finished one in 1993, so that should be considered my first, right? But, but, but, I was in a band that pretty much recorded a whole album in 1989, so that would be my first… right? But no, I was doing whole albums on portastudios and pairs of ordinary cassette decks before I even started highschool, and even drawing detailed cover art for them… so what is “first”? “First” is what you say it is. You don’t designate a blank space, and then suddenly create stuff out of thin air to fill that space — you create raw material just by being yourself, and then one day you decide to actually make a point of collecting, preserving, beautifying, and assigning track numbers to whatever is coming out of you, so that someone else in the world might benefit from it.

Okay, so the bad news is, your first album is going to have some of the tell-tale characteristics of a first album. It won’t truly reflect your unique style as well as something a few albums later would, once you’ve gained some momentum and a matured sense of intuition about the process. Once you hear it from the perspective of someone who no longer has the power (or motivation) to change it, the album may seem embarrassingly ambitious, lacking in subtlety, or just plain confused about what it’s supposed to be.

The good news is, every creative thing you ever do has a sort of “life of its own”, so you should try to look at it as an observer, saying, “that’s interesting”, instead of, “I suck”. In general, first albums are more valuable to long term appreciators and other artists than to the unsuspecting general public. They tell the first chapter of a great story about how you eventually developed the sound and style of your masterpiece (your sixth or seventh album). And they empower you, the artist, to continue creating without fear.

Embrace this weird passion that has entered your life. The heavens hath assigned to you and entrusted you with your first album project. Like your first car, it’s a wonderful, clunky “winter beater” with a fresh paint job; and though you may graduate to nicer and nicer cars as you go, you will never take this large a leap again.

This is where, if this were the last chapter of the book, I would just end it with “So… you want to make an album?” — but I don’t wanna get all teary-eyed here, because it’s a blog, not a book. Alright, I admit, I’ve got a little moisture in the edges of the eyes, but I swear, it’s just allergies or something. If I put this out as a book (and I probably have a few more middle parts to wedge in), it’s pretty much my “winter beater with a fresh paint job” in the literary world. Which is cool, because, hey. I don’t know what I’m typing anymore. Okay, over and out.

Rival Big Bang: sorting out the pile

As I sort out my pile of lyrical ideas for Rival Big Bang (which I have twice as many words as I need for, not counting new bits I’m coming up with to link stuff together), I feel like I’m sitting across from a nice, friendly, counselor-type person, who is telling me: “there’s no right or wrong way to do this. Follow your instincts. You don’t need to perform great feats of internal rhyme, or acrobatics of alliteration; just get the general message across and the music will carry it.”

Notice, of course, that when she says “acrobatics of alliteration”, she is obviously taunting me in an ironic way.

Update 12:24 AM: Okay, it has a shape to it now. Still has gaps and placeholders, but seriously, it was like alphabet soup before.

Update 10/27: I think this is basically it. Feel free to snicker at the crossed-out garbage that bit by bit got shoved to the bottom. Also feel free to snicker at the stuff that’s not crossed out, because without the dark-ish music, they might seem hokey. I don’t really expect any of my lyrics to stand on their own as pure poetry.

This will be the last song on the album. The lyrics only run half the length of the song, and then it goes on instrumentally. It clocks in at 4:20. Dude.

Quick note on aural fatigue

I’m writing this one quickly, on my way out the door, so forgive my lapse in quality control.

Last night I was up late working on a song. I was adding overdubs to it. Lemme clarify something about aural fatigue: you don’t necessarily lose all your ability to function when it’s setting in. You can still work. You might be on a roll with putting stuff down, and that’s great. What you are in danger of doing, is over-fiddling with mixing related stuff, because you’ll be a little lost regarding how present or clear something should be.

Like, last night, I had mixed feelings about this organ track I was doing. It had an excitement to it, but I felt like it was drawing attention away from the spirit of the music underneath it. “This is cool, but did I really want to go this direction?”

Today, it was much easier to put it in context. The very end of this organ part was really cool, have that up front in the mix, but have it a little quieter before it gets to that. And I immediately knew a couple things like this orchestra bell thing could start later, but also be louder, so it was okay for it to be “noticeable”, because by that far into it you’ll be starting to get bored of what’s going on up to that point, and need to hear a new instrument come in.

So the kind of creative work you can do while your ears are fatigued, is that you can play around with crazy-ish ideas (i.e. tossing things in to see how they sound, in the spirit of “playing” in the “what children do” definition of the word), but then give yourself the next day to decide how much of them to keep and how prominent in the mix they should be. Before you fire it back up, paint a mental picture of what it should sound like.

Also remember that when you’re fatigued, you might think a special effect makes something sound better, because you were getting sick of it the way it was, but leave yourself the opportunity to switch the effect off, or only use it on a certain part of a track.

Gotta go. Will reduce this pile of words to its essential point later.

White screen syndrome, on Freelance Switch

Here’s a short but well-articulated article about overcoming writer’s block, or as it’s referred to in the article, “white screen syndrome”. I think the general ideas are applicable to writing music and lyrics too. (We could call it “blank tape syndrome” or something.)

Excerpt:

My favourite method of getting something on the white screen is to just write what’s going through my head on the subject – then revise afterwards. I see it as a combination of stream-of-consciousness writing and Ann Lamont’s “shitty first draft.”

You know the subject matter, so just write. Usually it can be modified into something useful at the end and who knows, maybe you’ll find a few great sentences you wouldn’t have written if you were trying to stay professional.

I’ve written a few articles entirely like this and only had to edit out all the obscenities.

Here is the Anne Lamott (not “Ann Lamont”; hopefully FS will correct that soon) passage they’re referring to: an excerpt from Bird by Bird, which I hadn’t heard of before, but was curious enough to do a search on. (It’s awesome, by the way — except that as a mouse person, I would prefer she used something other than cruelty to mice in the visualization part at the end — regardless, don’t skip this one!)

And here are some notes that a fellow named Kyle took, summarizing Bird by Bird. Don’t sit back and let authors reap all the benefits of this stuff; how can you apply it to your music?

So you want to make an album? (part 22)

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 22: Click or no click (human time vs. machine time)

Before you even begin record a song, there is one global decision you need to make about your approach to it, and this decision will affect every successive stage as you go forward.

It’s the question of “click or no click”, or more precisely, “human time vs. machine time”: How do you establish the tempo of the song when you put that first track down?  Do you find a good sounding tempo on a drum machine or computer sequencer and stick to that? Or do you just pick up an instrument (including a drum set) and just play? There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Let’s start from the initial reasons why, as novices, we might choose one or the other without even really thinking about it.

Why use a click (machine time)? Maybe because we’re using software that, by default, displays a big tempo, shows bars and beats while playing and recording, and clicks on the beats while recording. All we have to do before we start is adjust that tempo until it sounds appropriate for our song. Then, as we continue to pile overdubs on, we can easily see where loud notes and percussive hits fall relative to this pre-established grid. This also makes it easy to mark sections of the song; the intro might start on bar 2, the first verse on bar 10, the first chorus on bar 26, and so on.

Why (again, as novices) would we not use a click (human time)? Again it could be what the software leads us to. Audacity, for example, functions a little more like an ordinary tape recorder than a sequencer (ideal software will be a combination of both). Or maybe you’re not even using software. If you have an ADAT machine or some kind of portastudio (although digital portastudios can have programmable tempo grids, and provide a reference click), you might be inclined to just “think like you’re using tape”.

There’s nothing wrong with either rationale for the person just getting started, because we have to just try it out one way or another to start learning and figuring out what works for us. But the longer we do this, the longer and more complicated the list of pros and cons gets on both sides.

Will it flatter my performance?

You want the music to sound good, but also, as a human being with an ego, you want to sound like you are a good musician. (Subtle distinction there.) Even if the drummer is anonymous, you don’t want the listener’s reaction of “yikes, what a shitty drummer” to toss a wet rag on their overall listening experience. So which method is going to make your drumming, bass playing, guitar playing, etc. shine the brightest? That depends.

Playing to a click is a separate skill that you have to practice and learn. It’s not quite as natural as playing to a drum track, which is why some click tracks will come with the option to sound more like drums — or you could have a temporary track using a sampled drum groove and replace it later. Or decide you like it as is, and just keep it. No matter what sound you use as a reference, there is one predominant challenge in playing your instrument along to it: avoiding “the lurch”. “The lurch” is when you’ve just been playing a hair behind (later than) or ahead of (earlier than) the beat for a few moments, and suddenly correct yourself. The moment when you spontaneously correct yourself will sound worse than what you were doing just before it, especially if you listen to this new track isolated. Having it in a mix may cover it up to some extent, but the less you rely on that, the better. When it comes time for mixing, you’ll want to be focused on creating a good balance, not on covering up awkward rhythmic glitches.

In order to play well with a metronome/click, you have to loosen your mental “grip” on the individual clicks, and try to feel the overall tempo more. In other words, mentally zoom out to the bigger picture. You still need to have an internal sense of tempo, which you strive to keep in agreement with the click, but you’re not checking each click one at a time and asking, “was I early or late for that one?” It’s not target practice. You don’t win a prize each time you “hit the click”.

This same challenge applies when you’re overdubbing on top of an existing performance, even if that was played freely by a human in human time, although in that case it should be much easier, because hopefully the slight timing irregularities in the existing tracks will correspond to how the song naturally “feels” to you.

The act of putting down a first track in human time, however, carries with it its own headaches. “Good tempo” is subjective, and our own idea of what a good tempo is will drift a little depending on what we heard previously, how much energy we have, and so on. Our perception of something as “too fast” or “too slow” also depends on how the rhythm divides the beat up, whether we play staccato or legato, how tight or loose the instruments are, how the song is mixed, and probably a zillion other factors. Compound this with our natural tendency to speed up as we go along.

All that said, there are tons of drummers who will play much better without a click track, for the reasons I outlined above. Similarly, if you’re doing a song that’s more acoustic based, with the “glue” of the song being, say, a guitar or piano, you can sometimes get a more natural performance if you’re not distracted by the “TOC toc toc toc TOC toc toc toc” of the almighty beat-per-minute counter.

What about logistics?

Using machine time from the get-go gives you some advantages later on. As I said earlier, you have a clearly laid-out grid where, at any time, you can see exactly what measure and beat you’re on, and have an easy visual reference if you want to adjust the timing of a note/hit by making careful cuts in the silent areas just before and after it and then sliding it to the left or right. If you decide later in the game that you want to add a keyboard part with a very exact rhythm, you’ve made this very easy for yourself — you simply sequence the keyboard part, by playing into the sequencer, drawing notes on a piano roll grid, or using a variety of other input methods — and then because your project is “aware” of where the beats are, you can easily quantize all those notes to the nearest sixteenth note, eighth note, or whatever your smallest subdivision is.

I wouldn’t say that human time has any logistic advantages, per se, but with all the artistic benefits, it doesn’t have to be a logistic nightmare.

For starters, you could simply go old-skool all the way. Not all that long ago, people used tape, and it was impossible (or extremely difficult) to synchronize a sequenced track to an existing performance. If you were going to combine sequenced performances with human performances, you always did the sequenced stuff first, be it drum machine or whatever. Eventually people came up with ways to apply a time code to one of the unused tracks, so that a computer could remain synchronized to the tape. But in this relatively post-tape era, that kind of workaround seems like a Rube Goldberg solution.

Anyway, I digress; my point was, there is absolutely nothing wrong with recording a drum set, then playing bass to that, then playing guitars to that, then singing over that. “Look, ma, no click!” This is perfectly legitimate. If your software’s timeline lets you choose between “bars/beats” and “minutes/seconds” views, choose the latter, because the bars and beats at the software’s default tempo will be irrelevant. The click would also have no relation to the song, so you’ll be leaving that turned off too.

If your human time performances are mostly good, but have a couple of sloppy spots, you can often look at the peaks on the drum track as a visual guide. If, however, you’ve started off a song in human time, but want all the advantages of using the software’s bars/beats view and quantization capablility for new sequenced tracks, you can still create a tempo grid after the fact that will perfectly align to your human performance. It won’t be as easy, but you can do it. I believe there is some software that will help you with this, but I’m going to assume you have to do it the hard way.

Let’s say you have a drum track recorded that you’re really happy with, and you’ve already edited it and cleaned up any bad timing by ear. First get an approximate idea of of its tempo. Generally, when you set tempos, you can tap something and the software will figure it out based on your tapping. Do this while your drum track is playing, watch the tempo fluctuate up and down a bit, and whatever it appears to average out to, go ahead and set this as the tempo for the whole project… for now.

Find beat one on your drum track, and drag the clip either left or right so that the peak is exactly on a barline, and set a tempo change exactly at that barline — for now, to the same tempo it already is. If your drummer’s tempo is really steady, you may be able to get away with doing four bars at a time. (If you actually started by recording a drum machine, but it wasn’t synched to anything, you should be able to do even more.) In a lot of cases it’s best to do one bar at a time, which will take longer. Keep looking ahead to the next significant downbeat. If the barline is to the left of the hit, you need to decrease the most recent tempo change; if the barline is to the right of the hit, you need to increase it. Make smaller and smaller adjustments until you zero in on it. Then as soon as that barline lines up with that hit, set a tempo change there, and look to the next significant downbeat to adjust that one. If a bar doesn’t start with a clearly defined downbeat, use an earlier or later bar (you don’t have to use the exact same number of bars for each tempo change). Listen back frequently with the click turned on, from the beginning up to where you are, to make sure you don’t hear four clicks where there are supposed to be three or five!

This might seem tedious while you’re doing it, but in the grand scheme of things it takes a negligible amount of time out of your life, and gives you the best of both worlds: a natural drum or guitar (or whatever) performance, and the ability/freedom to quickly add a precise keyboard part. (Of course, if the only keyboard part you’re going to add is something with soft, slow attacks, like a “pad”, as they call it, this might not be worth the trouble — but it’s great if you plan to add anything rhythmic.)

I’ve just described how it’s possible to harness the natural push and pull of a human performance, but remember you could also make a “human-like” tempo grid by starting with sequenced material, and speeding it up or slowing it down as it goes along. Some software lets you draw the tempo curve with an icon resembling a pencil. Other software requires you to enter individual values. Sequenced tracks, as opposed to audio tracks, will actually speed up and slow down according to your newly added tempo changes. Sometimes it might be good to first record a keyboard sequence to an unchanging tempo, and then fiddle with the tempo curve until you’re happy with how it sounds. I would advise you not to record any audio tracks until you’re completely happy with this curve.

There’s some trial and error in doing this, especially if you’re trying to get it to sound “human”; but on the plus side, once you get it to where you’re happy with it, your project will be very easy to work with, whether you’re recording audio or adding additional sequenced tracks. If you’re deciding whether to create a tempo grid first, or base a tempo grid on a human performance, it comes down largely to what instruments you’re featuring. If the song is heavily keyboard based, i.e. you’re using a lot of orchestral samples to simulate the sound of an orchestra, then this curve-drawing method might be ideal. If it’s more drum and guitar (or other “real instrument”) based, then I suggest the method I explained previously, where you record the performance and then map it (if you even need to map it, that is).

A few notes about fixing audio tracks

It’s not as easy to fix audio performances as it is to fix sequenced performances, where you can literally grab a note and just drag it into place. But it can be done. You want to start with the best performance you can, but there will likely be a few parts that still don’t sound 100% right to you. Slicing an audio track into little pieces and nudging them around may seem blasphemous, but it’s not as much of a black art as you might think.

1. Be sure to cut in a good spot. The quieter, the better. Cutting in the middle of a note will generally sound unnatural. And no matter how perfectly quiet of a spot you cut it at, always put a very short fade in/fade out — even if it’s just a few milliseconds — on the beginning and end of every new clip. Some sounds will be just quiet enough to not show up on the screen, but if you cut in the middle of any sound whatsoever without a fade, there’s a chance you will hear an audible click.

2. If there aren’t any good edit points on a track, but you absolutely need to shift something in time, use a crossfade. In most cases a “square root” fade curve, the one that bulges upward, will keep the overall volume most consistent through the overlap. If it still sounds noticeable, experiment with longer and shorter crossfades. The attack of a note should not be in the crossfade.

3. Don’t sacrifice horizontal timing for vertical timing. Any time you’re moving isolated bits of a track around on the timeline, be sure to listen to that track by itself and make sure it sounds consistent.

4. In real life, it’s normal for certain instruments to tend to play a little earlier or later than the beat. A strummed guitar sound will usually start a little before the beat. A piano will generally be a hair later than the beat. Also, a sound that’s slightly off the beat will stand out more, and you can use this to your advantage.

5. If a drum fill is a little too fast or too slow, but the hits are evenly spaced, it could still sound good. If they’re unevenly spaced, it might sound a little more awkward and amateurish. See if you can make a clumsy drum fill a little nicer, but be sure to crossfade carefully, especially if there are any ringing cymbals. (This would be suicide on tape, but we can at least try it, because we’re the “undo button generation”.)

6. We are naturally pickier about some things than other things. For example if we have really tight drums and bass, we can get away with a little looseness in the guitars. Since perfectionism tends to be addictive, we need to know when to stop. Listen for little rhythmic flaws in well-known songs by your favorite artists, and ask yourself if they actually bother you or just give the song character. Having every single sound precicely on the beat (or subdivision) can sometimes be impressive — but what’s necessary, and what’s overkill?

So You Want To Make An Album? (part 21)

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 21: Some general advice on tracking

These are just some thoughts to keep in your head during that long stretch in the middle of your project (the bulk of the work), when you’re doing the actual recording — actually playing the parts, choosing what takes to keep, and, somehow or another, smoothing out the rough spots. In particular, the tracks that people won’t be paying direct attention to: the “boring” basic tracks that form the song’s skeleton, the wind beneath the wings of your diva vocal track and your Eddie Van Halen guitar solo.

1. Be simple, but clever. When you come up with a rhythm guitar part, a drum part, a bass part, “clever” can be as simple as using a fairly common and clichéd riff, but just changing one little thing about it — adding in a note, leaving a note out, anticipating something (playing it a half beat early) rather than playing it on the beat. Playing the absolute most obvious thing you can think of is fine, but do a few takes and see if it evolves a little. Listen to your mistakes and see if they’re any good, because sometimes a “mistake” is actually your subconscious trying to make a suggestion. Leave holes. Play less. Dumb it down. Do at least one take where you say “screw you guys, I’m playing something totally different this time just because I can”. In that moment of rebellion you’ll find a little nugget or two of gold; keep those nuggets, but keep the rest fairly straightforward.

2. More tracks = less reverb. Reverb is additive.  (Fast readers: I said “additive”, not “addictive”, but that may apply to you as well.) It sometimes sounds cool to have a significant amount of it on a sparse mix, where you have maybe no more than three or four tracks total, and therefore have holes for those trails/tails to fill. If you like to do heavily layered stuff, with two or three rhythm guitars, two or three keyboards, and extra instrumentation beyond that, you’ll need to leave it relatively dry or you will lose definition.

3. The drums and the bass together are one instrument. I don’t care that rationally, we know otherwise; for production purposes, they are one instrument. If they don’t sound like one instrument, they’re not tight enough.

4. We hear timing both horizontally and vertically. Before you adjust the timing of a particular note relative to the other instruments, be sure it’s going to feel good relative to its own previous and subsequent notes. If you’re not sure, solo the track. A track will sound better if it’s consistently lagging (or consistently rushing) than if one perfectly timed note stands out in the middle of a string of lagging or rushing notes, messing up its “horizontal” rhythm. If you’re using editing to tighten rhythms, just be sure to check both the vertical and the horizontal.

Incidentally, I don’t think of using software to fix performances as “cheating”. I think when you do multitrack recording, you actually have some handicaps that you have to make up for. For one, you’re initially playing without hearing all the instruments (you have to hear them in your mind), so it is much harder to get into the right vibe right away. Besides that, you don’t have the energy of an audience to feed off of, so at first you feel like what you’re doing is “fake”. Recording is its own artform, though, more like painting than theater, and some of the talents it will showcase are your abilities to listen well and make good-sounding decisions.

5. As listeners, we’re more fussy and demanding at the beginning of the track. (To a lesser degree, we’re more fussy and demanding at the beginning of an album, but you never have a guarantee that people will listen to your album in sequence.) Make sure things are super-tight and super-in-tune when it kicks in. Then it’s okay for it to loosen up a little as it goes along — not sloppy, just a little looser — because hopefully by then we’ve “accepted” the song, and have an internal beat and tonal center going on in our brains. First impressions, and all that.

6. If you feel like you’re playing/singing a good take, you probably are. Use the take you feel best about while playing/singing, even if it has a few glitches that need to be fixed.

7. Every little thing you fix will make progressively smaller flaws more noticeable to you. Sometimes it’s good to “under-fix”, meaning adjust it only part way. Modern sequencers, for example, let you select a percentage when you quantize. This means you can compromise, retaining some of your original feel. Even if you know you’re going to quantize a keyboard part, play it the best you can, so you have the option of quantizing at a lower percentage. Besides, if you play really badly, the quantization will push some of your notes in the wrong direction! Check by first quantizing 100% to make sure it’s interpreting your performance correctly, and then undo-ing and experimenting with smaller percentages to taste.

8. Everything you add will make your previous tracks sound different. So when you’re putting down the first few tracks, yes, fuss over tuning and rhythm, but don’t spend too much time adjusting the sound (EQ and effects). At this stage, shoot for “dry and clean” (some effects like distortion and delays are of course “part of the sound”, but don’t get too deep into perfecting compression, EQ, or reverb before the rest of the instruments are there for context). Once you have more instruments down, you’ll have a better idea of what needs to be adjusted on the earlier tracks — or, as you play with the mute buttons, you might even find some of them superfluous and leave them out altogether.

9. The extra steps you take to make your basic tracks tight, clean, and in tune will pay off thousandfold when you get further along in the tracking. The little extra flourishes that you occasionally put into those tracks will make the finished product more lively and interesting, even if they’re “in the background”, as long as you don’t overdo them.

10. “Nobody’s gonna really be paying attention to this part” is a bad attitude. Remember you’re playing not just to the listener’s conscious mind, but also to the subconscious. Every little thing adds up.

11. There are good flaws and bad flaws. Yes, I know it’s a challenge to know the difference. Resist the quantizers and the autotunes for a minute, and listen with your heart.

12. Simply having more experience of going through the whole process will improve your confidence and your ability to “trust the music”. If you’re three-quarters of the way through your first project, and stuck in that awful love/hate relationship with it, the sooner you finish it up and move on to something fresh, the saner you’ll be. The first project will not be perfect. Do your best and move on. Even if you’re not ready to wrap up that first project, start sketching out some ideas for the next one, and imagine the future you, looking back at the first one as “ambitious and endearingly naïve”, and happily having bigger fish to fry — this will give you a healthy sense of perspective.

13. Do not judge yourself harshly, if your project got off to a bad start and is headed in a direction you don’t like. If you do enough recording, you will like at least some of what comes out of it. Pay attention to what works for you, and don’t get hung up on what doesn’t work.

14. There’s a series of DVDs about classic albums. In fact, it’s called “Classic Albums“. I’ve only seen three of them, but I want to see them all. Even if you’re not into most of the bands featured in the series, you should pick a few you don’t mind and check them out. Quoting Wikipedia:

The music, and its production, is dissected by the musicians and/or producer playing the multitrack recordings and singling out tracks that one does not usually consciously hear when listening to the music, giving insight into the way the sound is built up.

This is probably your best bet for getting a feel for what kind of basic tracks will lend themselves to creating the “overall sound” that you’re looking for in the end. Beyond that, the programs will simply give you extra inspiration to fight lethargy and circumstance, and simply go forward. I can’t recommend this strongly enough.

15. Everything you do will one day be “old”.

16. Everything you do matters. Have a noble spirit. If you have a total audience of three people, show them your appreciation by creating a fantastic performance for them. And besides, you’re not just playing to a present audience, you’re playing to a future audience as well, including people who may hear it long after you’ve moved on to another plane of existence.

17. “Perfect” and “wonderful” are on two different axes, at 90-degree angles from each other. They have nothing to do with each other. Aim for wonderful, and if you can make it perfect too (without sacrificing wonderfulness), make that your second priority.

18. I do this kind of thing because, when I put down one track, and get it the way I like it, even if it’s just a basic part that’s going to be in the background, I get excited about it. I hope you get excited about each little step too.

19. Make recordings that will inspire other musicians to make recordings. Pass along pointers and advice that you pick up along the way, in your own words. Yes, you’re making history, but it doesn’t end at you.

20. At any given time, someone out there, someone you’ve forgotten, or someone you’ve never met, could be listening to your song while driving, or walking, gardening, or who knows what. They might even have a rough mix or early demo that you weren’t totally happy with. But they kept that song in their rotation, because they got something out of it; it meant something to them. Someone, somewhere, is listening. Remember this any time you get discouraged. Keep going.

Sneak preview: info page about Leave of Absence 2

I have most of the writing done for a rudimentary info page about all the tracks on Leave of Absence 2. Other than adding a couple of clips from demos and alternate versions, I don’t think much more will be added; if you just want something to read and don’t necessarily want to hear the outtakes, here’s a sneak preview. I’ll re-announce it when the clips are up.

(Do you want lyrics on there too? Let me know.)

Edit 10/18: there are clips up now. (Warning: really early, low quality demos, for educational and historical purposes only.) No lyrics yet…

Edit 10/19: added a few pics…

Progress report: Fr. Hifta Ryphtor

I suggest listening to the second audio clip in the previous post — the updated mix — while reading this.

It’s kind of scary to me how “right” I’m doing the current (coming fairly soon, hopefully) album, Fr. Hifta Ryphtor (assuming I don’t change the title), at least by the values I’ve been preaching lately on this blog. By which I mean, philosophically and artistically right… actually following my own advice, for real. And I’m using the word “scary” in a literal sense here. Not scary in a bad way, but scary enough that there’s a leap of faith involved in making it.

I’ve hit on this topic a few times in my So You Want To Make An Album series, but it bears repeating, and in plain English: if you have the luxury of working in your own studio, and not paying for recording time, it’s best to only plan the album out in a skeletal way, leaving plenty of holes open, so you still have something creative to do at every stage. In other words, don’t divide the project into creative work and busy work, and do all the creative work first, leaving nothing but busy work. Don’t pre-plan every detail in every single song, and then pound out the overdubs in an assembly line manner. It’s like giving your muse a temp assignment and then locking it in the closet after you think you’ve “milked” it. Instead, get it involved, and keep it involved every step of the way.

This is scary, and does require a leap of faith. I have gaping holes in my track list, and songs with incomplete lyrics. Yet I can tell from the material I have, like having enough puzzle pieces filled in to see the overall shape of the picture, that this is going to be a fucking fantastic album.

This is not how it was for Open the Window or Through Forbidden Black Doors. On both of those projects I nailed down the song order before so much as putting down a drum track, and clung to it religiously. Then I typically felt like some songs were behaving, while other songs were being difficult. There wasn’t an issue of not having any high quality material for either of those, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t demonstrating total trust in the muse. Great stuff still managed to come out, but I didn’t understand that I was putting the brakes on it, making it harder than it had to be. I got so frustrated with all the seemingly external obstacles constricting the flow of my projects, not realizing I was creating those obstacles. Unfinished Business and Leave of Absence were steps in the right direction, but with production quality sometimes taking a back seat to artistic exploration.

Still, I’m not saying this with regret; this is all part of The Great Learning, and it was necessary for me to experience that to the extreme in order to be where I am right now. Would I go back and do it differently? That’s a useless question. (For one thing, I have, in a sense, “gone back and done some things differently”, but that’s not what I mean.) If I were to change the past, I wouldn’t have the present as it is. It’s really as simple as that.

Oh, and another awesome thing about this album: no “boy-girl” themes (sorry, Mike Love). Nothing about relationships, heartbreak, lust, jealousy, or anything like that. Granted, when I have touched on those subjects in the past, it was always in my own way, bravely putting my passive-aggressive, co-dependent neuroses on display, so I’ll at least give myself credit for that. But one thing that really appealed to me about Dark Side of the Moon, way back in my musical infancy, is that the album isn’t about some external object of your desire; it’s about YOU, the person listening to it. And I’m happy to say Fr. Hifta Ryphtor seems to be my first album to have that consistently going for it as well.

Edit 10/16/07: I still haven’t escaped the “really old shit being released as new” pattern, mind you. I’m working on cleaning up Happy Birthday Pump Prototype, and reminded by this song that time is, really, in fact, going by, and I’m not entirely caught up to it. But the poor freakin’ instrumental has never been on an album before, and a lot of people liked it. Consider it the “token 1980s-styled drum machine song”. It’s kind of in the spirit of Propaganda’s Dream Within A Dream. No, I don’t know anything else about that band. I’m a cold-hearted one night stander that gets the musical influence he needs and then isn’t there the next morning to listen to the rest of your album.

Harmonized guitars

Man, I freakin’ love doing harmonized guitars like this:

I don’t care if it is a 1980s hair metally kind of thing, or a 1970s middle-of-the-roady Eaglesy/Bostony kind of thing, or what cheezy genre it sprung forth from. I just like the sound of that particular musical… *cough*… “device”. I’ll be working on using the guitar to do a lead melody line, as I was just now — a specific melody as opposed to an improvised solo — and while I’m fiddling around with ways to reinforce it (unison, octave up, octave down, etc.), I say, eh, what the hell, and start to play along with it a third higher — you know the sound — as a sort of internal joke, initially snickering at myself for shamelessly barreling straight for the cliché — but then reluctantly admitting to myself that I just plain have to keep it.

Dammit.

Edit 11:00 PM sunday: Here it is a little better mixed. I sped up the whole first measure by 4% because it really felt like it was dragging, which was hard to tell when all I had to go by was a drum track.

How did I speed up the first measure by 4%? With a calculator, and some careful slicing and dicing. So there you go… that 27 seconds of music encapsulates me. You don’t need anything else. Play it for my funeral. It will be a 27 second funeral, which is great, because nobody likes funerals… although some people will complain that they got all dressed up for a 27 second funeral, but hey, let’s be real, you can’t please everyone.

Pulling a Radiohead…

For those of you that either link/bookmark straight to the blog, or use an RSS reader (and therefore skip the news page that keithhandy.com directs people to), you can now download and listen to Leave of Absence 2 in its entirety in 224 kbps mp3 format before deciding to purchase it! Nicely packaged CDs will continue to be available on lulu.com at a reasonable price if, like many people (myself included), you like physical objects.

I’ll soon write a more extensive post/page revealing more than you ever wanted to know about every single click, bang, and whirl on Leave of Absence 2.

Send some thanks to my friend Brooke for encouraging me to enter the twenty-first century. And be sure to check back for more music to come.

Interesting way to write a weird vocal melody

The usual (for me): really really old song gets rewritten with a new twist, but even then isn’t totally followed through on for a long time. In this case, we’re talking so old that the original lyrics were downright painful. It’s actually that “The Tube” song from the days of that old stapled-together loose leaf, pictured on installment one of the So You Want series.

Even at the age of 12 or 13 (early 1980s), I was already getting weird with chord progressions, almost by necessity. There was a guitar with only three strings on it, and I would tune them to either a major or minor chord (minor in this case) and barred it with my thumb while the guitar sat on my lap (and sometimes I’d also be tapping a tambourine on the floor with my foot). So The Tube was all minor chords, and the main gist was to start at the octave fret, go up one, down three, up one, down three, and so on, until it got all the way to the bottom. Then there’s another part from there, but using the same kind of barred minor chords.

Sometime later, in the mid 90s, I wrote a dumb poem about a recording session gone haywire, and then realized that it was written in the same meter as The Tube. I figured if I ever pulled that tune out again, I’d use those as lyrics, but they would have to have a more interesting melody than just following the “up one, down three” pattern of the progression. I have two different bits of sheet music for it, worked out at various points during the last several years, but neither one has a proper melody. One has a bunch of “pseudo-notes”; just notes drawn at approximate intervals to how my pitch would go up and down if I was speaking them, without any thought given to the chords, and no specific rhythm. The other sheet has a rhythm worked out, done separately, without any indication of pitch. So these were kind of like lost soulmates (or socks) that needed to be matched up.

In my Tracktion project for this song, what I’ve done is plunked all the notes in on a midi track (sounded as an electric piano, just as a sort of “musical scratch pad”), as they appear on the pages, and then fiddled with their pitches until they had some semblance of relationship to the strange chord movement underneath. But, I was losing track of which words went with which notes, so I did an additional guide track where I was speaking the words to the rhythm. Um, rapping? I don’t know. But the idea is that I can listen to this a few times until it embeds itself into my longer-term memory, then sing it in a more natural, less disjointed way. (Having a mental picture of what this sketch represents in terms of a real vocal part is what I mean by “hearing the greatness in the shit“.)

Regarding one line in there, “fat old maids that reek of booze” — I apologize for the social stereotyping, but I wrote the poem quickly, on a whim (on cardboard, no less), without much thought, and unfortunately, “full-figured, mature, single women who enjoy a good cocktail now and then” would not have fit the meter or rhyme scheme.

I must not rest on my laurels…

…because I’m not very good at it. It’s now the end of week #1 of Leave of Absence 2 being available on CD through Lulu.com. As experienced as I am at working on stuff, I have very little experience finishing and letting go of stuff, so that experience tends to be somewhat traumatic. I exaggerate, but I do have to make peace with the non-existence of an immediate stampede of customers; but the good thing is, if there’s anything technically wrong with the handful of discs that have been ordered so far — like gaps between the songs — it won’t be a nightmare to arrange for those people to receive corrected versions. In a few days I’ll know for sure about that. Like I said, this is a guinea pig. And thank goodness I’m not paying rent on a storefront, or any up-front manufacturing costs.

But anyway, the best thing to do is quit re-loading my stats, and just get on with more work. Get that whirlpool going. So in that spirit, here I am working on It’s You, on an instrumental for the beginning of the current album, Fr. Hifta Ryphtor (which I should be able to finish in a few months):

It’s not technically an overture, but I noticed today that at about 2:22 the chords kind of hint at Curtis’ Classic Collection of Comforts. So I went ahead and accentuated that. Here’s a (slightly) more “mixed” version of the above — note that I fixed the sloppy timing at the end (God bless digital):

Note also that the first few guitar phrases are gone now, save for some barely audible volume swells.  I never intended for the guitar to come in right at the beginning, but it’s good to play through the whole thing just to get in the flow/mindframe.

In case you’re wondering, yes, there is such a thing as Leave of Absence 1, as well as an early-ish album called Unfinished Business, and I intend to remaster them and make them available as well. I also have a large enough collection of what I’ve been referring to as “orphan tracks” to compile into yet another album, and this morning I had the spectacular idea of naming said compilation Extreme Leftovers. Because, you know, Leave of Absence is technically leftovers, so anything that didn’t make it onto that would be even more “left over”. And far from being lesser-quality material, it would include some of my all time favorites such as Mana and Phone Booth.

Some random thoughts on “wage slavery”

Some random thoughts on “wage slavery”:

1. Not everyone who works feels like a “slave”.

2. Most people who don’t feel this way get something positive out of work besides money and benefits, whether they admit it or not; they like to get out of the house, they like their co-workers, their job gives them a sense of purpose, etc.

3. No one has a perfect situation at work, but there’s a difference between having unpleasant inconveniences to grumble about, and feeling like their job is destroying their spirit.

4. People on opposite sides of this dividing line should have a better understanding of each other, and not think their situation applies to everyone else — be it “I go to work every day, so should you”, or “I’m taking a stand, so should you”.

5. It would not necessarily be good for society for everyone in the world to work independently, or even for smaller companies.

6. That said, it would definitely not be good for society for everyone to work for a large corporation, especially under existing laws and politics.

7. It should probably be illegal for health insurance companies to offer lower rates to employees of corporations than they will to an independent individual.

8. “Independent” is a subjective term; part of the reason we go to work is to be independent of our parents, but we are simply transferring the dependence to an employer in order to separate our financial dependencies from our emotional dependencies. If we freelance, we become dependent on our clients.

9. In many cultures, extended families are considered normal. In western civilization, we refer to “losers living in their parents’ basements”, and the real estate industry counts on us to keep this shameful stigma intact.

10. That said, the more independent-minded you are, the more you’re going to need to get your own space. But to have another home you’re always welcome to return to is better than living in fear.

11. Most people see money as an end, not a means, and will rationalize sacrificing all their time and energy (i.e. their life) on this basis.

12. If a person who didn’t have to work were to be content watching television all day, then he is not missing out on much of an opportunity by being at work, so it is hard for him to understand when someone actually has something to do that they are being held back from.

13. None of the jobs I’ve worked at have ever provided any substantial value to society.

14. Reform would not require every single person to change their lifestyle.

15. Conditions for low-wage workers are poor because workers unilaterally accept those conditions. But, they are conditioned to accept those conditions, so it is a self-perpetuating cycle.

16. People act how they are treated.

17. A person treated badly in situation A will often act badly in situation B. So poor treatment within a company can have effects outside the company.

18. “Slavery” in this context is probably an insult to actual slaves.

19. Just because something is better than something else, does not mean it is good enough.

20. Work would ideally be measured in productivity, not time. Not just by employers, but by the public mindset. The phrase “putting hours in” should be reserved for criminals doing jail time.

21. A wage is a guarantee that you’ll still get paid on a day when business is poor. But it’s already worked out in advance that you’ll be underpaid for the busy days more often than you’re overpaid for the slow days.

22. Because it’s not a problem for all people, not all people will perceive it as a problem. (My own emotional sense of it as a problem actually wafts in and out. Because this very list is so soft-spoken, I’m practically talking myself out of giving a shit!) Without using radical sounding terms like “wage slavery”, or trying to incite riots, there must be constructive ways of bringing fresher ideas into the public consciousness. I don’t even think there are really 22 distinct thoughts here; maybe the essence could be put into three or four. A lot of it is stigma-based, which is hard to uproot. People believe in that 40 hours. It has a magical quality to it. If you put in that 40, you’re a good citizen.

Probably everything I’ve said here can be struck down with logic, or at least pragmatism. For example, say a factory pays its workers based on the number of parts assembled. Now watch as the workers steal each others’ finished parts, misrepresent their output, or work so fast that their quality goes down the tubes. It’s like you can’t devise any system without factoring in the zillions of ways unethical people will try to cheat it. But in planning ahead for that, you wind up treating innocent people with suspicion too, resulting in lower morale.

I’m no utopia strategist; my way would just be to say, well, people don’t actually want to work here, so maybe these things shouldn’t be manufactured at all.

I’m such a wimp…

New adds (Friday morning):

23. A part of me wants to commit a bizare kind of “half suicide” in which I would continue to exist in physical reality, but cease to have any financial identity or any interaction with money.

24. I’ve gotten very good at “imaginging there’s no such thing as money” (sing it to the Lennon tune if you like), and it makes the people checking their watches in traffic jams and long lines appear to have very neurotic behavior patterns.

25. It’s not illegal to be broke, but we’re conditioned to feel that way.

26. I would like very much to be adopted as a pet.

27. I wish our culture had apprenticeship programs that provided food and lodging as you learned a skill or trade for no money.

28. I don’t want to fill out another form as long as I live.

29. I particularly don’t want to write out my address and phone number in longhand ever again. Nor do I want to remember where I’ve worked.

30. I believe that life is abundant and scarcity is artificial. There’s enough in the world for everyone, but they don’t want you to know that (clichéd and paranoid sounding, but I think it’s pretty accurate).

31. The higher your rent, the less time you get to spend there.

32. When you’re asleep, a studio apartment doesn’t feel any different than a luxury mansion.

33. I often see a bumper sticker that says “live simply so that others may simply live”. If more people embraced this, it would go a long way towards resolving all the issues I’m gently ranting about here.

34. The lilies don’t worry, the birds don’t worry — some guy in a book.

35. “Being responsible” doesn’t mean following orders. Take responsibility for how you are treated. If you are being treated badly, leave.

36. Time is not money, chop chop. The context in which that phrase had some validity is not the entirety of the cosmos.

37. Value is determined by perception. We all know this, but think about the broader implication here. If it’s all smoke and mirrors, then what’s the real value of the stuff in our wallets?

38. At the beginning of the month I fill out a small slip of paper and hand it to a person I don’t know very well, and they leave me alone for a month. It’s still just numbers, paper, and abstractions, albeit regulated so you can’t just “make money up” as an individual. (But apparently you can “make money up” pretty easily if you’re a corporation.)

39. I have been “in debt” for twenty years, so for my entire adult life I’ve felt like nothing I have is really mine. So of course I feel some resentment about this, and some of that is expressing itself in strange ways in some of these thoughts, but it is therapeutic. I’m pretty sure I’ve already paid well more than everything I owe, if you took interest and penalties out of the equation, and I would like to completely pay off the rest — but what I “owe” at this point is on their books, not in my heart.

So you want to make an album? (part 20)

The fact that this installment is about finishing stuff does not mean the series itself is finished. It just happens to be timely for me. If/when I make this into a book, I’ll be sure to arrange the chapters more logically.

To read the entire series, go to the “So You Want…” category.

Installment 20: Let go of the baby!

Wrapping things up seems like it would be a simple matter of putting in the time and effort until your song or album is “done”. That assumes “done” is a simple notion. First, you will be “pretty much done”, then you’ll be “basically done”, and then you’ll be “really done”, and then you’ll be “absolutely done”, and so on. It’s a maddening series of greater degrees of done-ness. During all these stages you’ll of course be apologizing to everyone for how rough the mix is, even though most people — unless your target audience happens to consist entirely of seasoned producers — won’t be able to hear the difference by now.

But it’s not just the technical tweaking that you have to contend with; there’s a much harder psychological process involved in making the decision that it’s okay for your little one to be sent out into the world to be eaten alive by the wolves. (It won’t really be eaten, but it will be stepped on, pushed aside, and drowned out by the noise of the world en route to its true audience.)

Think about this: when someone puts a song out, they use the word “release”. They say they are releasing the song. What does that really mean, literally? It means letting go. Music came to you from somewhere in the time space continuum, as a raw wave of inspiration, and you were given the task of raising it, molding it, and dressing it up nicely. It was on loan to you. You were its nanny or foster parent, but it is (and has always been) part of the larger cosmos, something that exists “within you and without you” (to borrow a George Harrison lyric), and in the grand scheme of things, has nothing to do with your ego, apart from the fact that it had a symbiotic relationship with your ego for a period of time. You’ve just had the great opportunity to work first-hand with something eternal and larger than you — music — and when you’ve done all you can do to shape it into something that fits on a CD and complements the stereo equipment your listeners will be playing it on, you need to step out of its way and let it find its place in the world.

The problem is, by the time we get this far, the relationship between the music and our ego has gone from symbiotic to co-dependent. We’re thinking, “this music reflects me“. How does that hamper our ability to promote the work? Well, for one, we might feel a weakened ability to stand behind a song if the lyrics (for example) come from a less advanced stage in our emotional development — especially if, like me, you take a long time to record music. But if we’re always growing, as we should be, wouldn’t this always be the case? The music came to us when we were at a particular stage for a reason. If the music had wanted “more mature lyrics”, it would have waited longer to come to you, or it would have gone to a more mature person. Whatever perspective you had when you wrote it, that’s what the audience for that song is going to identify with. What matters is that your newer material reflects your growth, so that your audience can grow with you. (Revising stuff is fine if you still feel the song, but your primary motive shouldn’t be the ego-fueled avoidance of embarrassment.)

This is just one of a zillion ways an unhealthy ego-music relationship can manifest as a stifling of your creative flow; and when I say “flow”, I’m talking about the Big Flow, all the way from inspiration to expression (if it hasn’t reached an audience, it hasn’t been “expressed” yet). The solution is to deal with this early on. Don’t wait until the mastering stage to face your separation anxiety!

Your ego is important, mind you. Your ego is the carpenter, the craftsman. Your ego sets up the scaffolding, pours the concrete, and makes sure wood is being cut to the right length. In a more literal sense, your ego establishes key and tempo, it sets the recording levels, it selects what instruments to use, and makes sure they’re in tune. Your ego picks the best takes, guides you to flaws that need to be fixed (or covered up), and generally leads you through all the stages from basic tracking to overdubbing to mixing to mastering. Your ego deals with the structure-oriented aspects of funneling music into a tangible form. This is something you and your ego can be proud of.

But that first inspired moment you had, when you first started playing those chords in that order, and suddenly had a shiver down your back, or a heightened sense of “realness” — that would be a good time to start thinking grateful, thankful thoughts towards whoever or whatever out there just handed you this gift — or call it a “curse” if it amuses you. Actually it’s a little of both, and maybe a responsibility too, but mostly a gift. And a compliment. So accept the compliment, and do your best, but remember all the while that it chose you, and not the other way around.

Thinking this way will make things like mixing and mastering so much easier. Because instead of confusing the process with your need for the music to “represent you”, you can listen to it as an audience member. A very special audience member, but an audience member nonetheless. It’s not you; it’s it, and you’re you. With that out of the way, it will be so much simpler to say, “okay, needs this turned up a bit here, and, ah, that’s better — now this needs to be adjusted like this, and — yes, good”. On the other hand, if your ego is still attached to it, nothing will sound right, no matter what you do.

So how do you let go of the baby? Early and often. Any time you start to feel your ego attaching itself to a song, gently remind yourself that you’re just the conduit, that if you weren’t qualified to handle the job you wouldn’t have been chosen for it, and if you do your best, that’s absolutely good enough.