The Light of Day

Does that make me crazy? Possibly.

“Crazy”, when used to describe someone’s mental state, is not a nice or modern term. But that aside, what does it mean? Can I say I was leaning farther that way than usual during a period roughly between 1990 and 1992? That’s what I tend to do, though I try to frame it with more compassionate words like “going through a rough time”. But what would it actually mean?

I know there are experts on psychology who discuss this in further depth than I’m able to, but let me toss out some definitions off the top of my head.

It would seem that I couldn’t claim insanity outright, because I’ve always had a well-developed sense of logic and reason. I didn’t take a course in statistics and probability, but I get the gist. (I’m not “crazy” enough to buy lottery tickets.) I know how to be critical of my own thoughts.

However, there are people with highly developed logical constructs of their own who manage to come up with terrifying conclusions, and can explain in elaborate detail why the muppets are communicating to them through controlled cloud formations that the FBI is reading their thoughts through stool samples collected at public bathrooms (unless they drink enough vinegar to scramble the data).

So this means “a sense of logic” isn’t good enough; we now have to distinguish between good logic and “crazy” logic. Each time I think of a way to differentiate between the two, I find myself coming up with notable exceptions. For example, favoring a majority viewpoint over a fringe belief, in which case we’d be discrediting the likes of Galileo and other pioneers.

Then I suppose I could try another defining factor: happiness (or lack thereof). If you’re happy, and at peace, can you technically be crazy? Even if you have beliefs which turn out not to be true, or logic with some holes in it? And it’s often said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, which is what a lot of unhappy people do.

How about a total inability to communicate? If a person refuses to truly listen to anything you try to explain to them, and continues to repeat and reinforce a viewpoint that you’ve already explained away, you’re more likely to chalk them up as “not well” than if they said, “that’s an interesting point. I’ll have to think about that”.

Or how about lack of humor — inability to laugh from the belly, or to acknowledge absurdity? Or never asking questions, only ever making statements, as if you are The One with the knowledge? Or placing a high priority on some obsession of yours that ultimately has little effect on anyone, while disregarding the things that really matter?

Maybe insanity is one of those concepts that you can’t define by any one thing, but… well, think of an object with three elastic strings attached to it, and three people standing around it in a circle, suspending the object above the ground by each holding their own string taut in one direction. No one person is dictating the position of the object. If any one person moves from side to side, or increases or decreases his tension, the object will move, but it’s still dependent on all three people. Maybe sanity is similarly the sum result of several forces/factors pulling in a variety of directions.

A bleak moment before the creative storm (December 1990).

The way I felt (and feel) about music I was working on between 1990 and 1992 is mixed. Not just the usual “mixed”, but mixed with extremes at both ends. The extreme positive about it is that I had the will, ambition, focus, and commitment to get serious, take the wheel, liberate my muse from a dependence on bandmates, and try to ascend from “demo” level to “album” level on a limited budget without anyone’s help. I admire the Keith of that time for that. But I ache for how serious and important this was to him, to the point where he couldn’t just go off and have a bit of fun between sessions. It was like a religious mission. Hell, it was a religious mission. It was too important.

This is the backing track from Dear Diary (1991/92), without vocals. I wish I could listen to this and just think “that’s pretty neat, in a slightly embarrassingly dated way”, but there are too many emotional associations.

(Incidentally, this is when I was “born” as a guitarist. I wasn’t comfortable with it yet — improvising was clearly out of the question, although I tried once or twice — and I had to hunch over the guitar and stare closely at the frets to get the notes right.)

One thing I notice about people who exhibit various character flaws is that they’re often trying to compensate for something they perceive to be the exact opposite. My determination to rigidly control every aspect of the Open The Window album was a reaction to my feeling a greater loss of control over my life… and to a lesser extent, an uphill fight against the maddeningly convoluted digital ping-ponging technique I imposed on myself, for the wrong reasons. Any time I go back to one of these mixes it brings back the overwhelm and the futility. (Lesson: what you put in is what you get out.)

That said, it was shortly after the millionth re-EQ’ing of these nine overworked songs that I began the slow and clunky journey towards getting over myself (somewhat, that is… so, okay, it’s a never ending journey, and I’m fine with that)… so, it all ends with a light at the end of the tunnel.

Apparently, though, I felt like I had to stay in the tunnel until it was done.

What Do You Think Of Yourself?: new vocal

First, enjoy the session, ’cause I think it went pretty well…

It’s actually a lot easier than my Rival Big Bang sessions were, because it has a definite and more structured melody. The part between approximately 4:00 to 5:00 is a little empty, though, and rather than featuring me half-heartedly ad-libbing, I want to fill it in with something like gospel singers. I just emailed Paul Gaspar to see if he knows any.

I’ve only been saving my session videos as 320 by 240 MPEGs — better looking than what you see on YouTube, but still small — because the videos themselves aren’t meant to be works of art. That said, I’d still like to incorporate parts of them into more formal “music video” videos. There’s stuff you can do to low-res images to make them… not necessarily look hi-res, but at least look better when blown up.

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)

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.

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.

Keep singing

Before I can write anything with a clear head, let me exorcise myself of the residual anger at some recent youtube comments. It seems like these jerks only target the cover songs, because they idolize their rock stars and get offended when you don’t sound exactly like them. It took me decades to get over my own mother telling me I probably shouldn’t sing (when I was 15). There’s something fundamentally wrong with telling anyone they shouldn’t do something, and singing (or anything you do that reveals some incredibly personal aspect of yourself, including the limitations of your own physical body) takes a lot of courage, period. I want to tell these jerks I sure hope they’re not parents or teachers.

What could be more creatively inhibiting than this rule: don’t open your mouth unless you’re sure something beautiful will come out. Don’t put your paintbrush to the canvas unless you can promise to not make something ugly. Don’t touch, try, or do anything unless you’re guaranteed not to fail. Modern society does not encourage creativity, because it does not encourage screwing up, missing a note, making a mistake, inviting criticism. (Actually, criticism, when it really is criticism, is fine. But this is rare.)

(Above screenshot illustrates the Dunning-Kruger effect)

I need to remind myself that when they tell me “you suck, you shouldn’t sing”, etc. — yes, there is some concrete basis for it, as they are responding to some strain in my voice that really is there, which in fact a lot of people will resonate with and hear as passion — what they’re predominantly doing is projecting their own repression onto me. They’re afraid to sing. They’re afraid to try. No truly talented singer who has put a lot of work into developing their skill would use such destructive put-downs.

Knowing this intellectually doesn’t change the fact that immediately after reading such a comment, when I pick up a guitar and try to “sing it off”, I feel some paranoia about the kinds of similarly rotten thoughts people just outside my window must be having about what they can hear of me. Some people outside the window are repressed and will have those thoughts. So fuck them, right? Intellectually, no problem. Emotionally it always requires a re-aligning of self esteem before I can be “in my game” again.

I’ve often told people that a defining moment in my life was listening to Dark Side of the Moon for the first time when I was about eleven years old… but possibly even more defining was listening to Ummagumma. To this day I think it’s a pretty awful album, and all the more awful by Dark Side standards. But instead of thinking of it as a finished product, I now think of it as a sneak peek into the process, the raw material, the stuff under the hood, the grotesquely imperfect underbelly of a band figuring themselves out. It’s “crap” like Ummagumma that reminds you that you can start with this and get to that. A friend once told me he thought bands should never put stuff like that out. None of the musicians themselves are particularly proud of it, for that matter. But it’s this kind of unwitting open-sourcing of process that helps us to break down the invisible force-field between ourselves and our own potential. Would you go back in time and tell them “don’t put out Ummagumma — in fact, don’t put out anything until you’re good — just sit there for three years until your masterpiece appears”?

A lot of people don’t want to break down that force field. They believe that it’s good to maintain a clear dividing line between entertainers and consumers. CDs are things that magically appear in the store, all shiny and shrink-wrapped, and regular people don’t make them. They’re afraid that if they humanize the people who created those CDs, or de-mystify the process, they will spoil the magic of the music. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, because the more you study and examine everything that goes into making music, the more magical and mysterious it actually becomes.

Anyway, singing in particular is a hard horse to get back onto when somebody knocks you off. You’ve just let somebody kick you where you’re extremely vulnerable. But you have to take it — you have to get back on the horse. Their envy that you can sing at all is more painful (and lasting) than the brief sting of being told something you know isn’t true.

So you want to make an album? (part 14)

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

Installment 14: Installment fourteen is the new installment one!

Yes indeed, thirty is the new twenty, white is the new black, and now, installment fourteen is the new installment one. Since I have so much momentum going with this “so you want to make an album” series, where you would expect to find you everything you ever needed to know about cutting your own number one, it’s time for me to stop yakking about all the drugs I’ve taken and all the parties I’ve gotten naked at, and time for… reader participation!

If you haven’t started work on your album, I don’t want to hear about it. I know you’re confused, because you’ve been told all your life that the green light means go, and the red light means stop — but you’ve entered the bizarro parallel alternate world of recording, where things are different.

Yes, that’s right, red means “tape is rolling”. And in your case, tape is most likely a metaphor for hard drive space. But it’s also a metaphor for something much larger: your life. Your life is rolling. The red light on your life is always on. So the only reason for the red light on your recording equipment to not be on as well, is to maintain the comforting illusion that this particular moment doesn’t count.

Are you ready? That’s a trick question, and I’m only asking it because that’s the question you’re asking yourself. The answer is: you have always been ready. And also: you will never be ready. There is no such thing as “ready”, so purge yourself of this paralyzing concept right now.

Name any excuse why this is not a good time for you to put down a track, and I’ll tell you exactly why that makes it the best time to put down that track. At the risk of getting all “lemons to lemonade” on you, I sincerely believe that every perceived obstacle is really a gift to help us each find our unique sound — if we let it. Sore throat? You’re about to discover an interesting way of singing the melody. Injured left hand? Obviously that guitar bit is destined to be played with a slide. Power outage? That’s the pad and pencil calling your name. Malfunctioning equipment, or lacking a critical piece of gear? Congratulations, you’re an inventor. Broken string, and no stores are open? Fresh, “innovative” guitar part on the horizon, or maybe a keyboard part you hadn’t thought of. Bad mood creeping up on you? New song en route. I suggest you thank whoever or whatever is guiding you with these helpful nudges, and nothing says “thank you” like hitting the frickin’ record button.

How many songs need to be written and/or selected when you hit the button? Zero. Are you plugged in? When you hit the button, can you make a sound? Can you play just one note? Play it. Can you improvise well? No? Can you improvise badly? Do it. Nothing to sing? What’s in front of you? What’s to your left? Talk about it. Talk about how boring it is. Talk and talk and talk until something comes out that you like. Then sing it.

Creating is sort of like fishing. You don’t just magically burst forth with product. You simply elect to begin capturing what flows through you anyway. And unlike fishing (hence the “sort of”), the very fact that you’re doing it at all feeds back into your well of inspiration and accelerates your “magic moments”. Think about it: if you were an angel, seeking a worthy conduit for an awesome guitar solo, would you give it to someone with a long track record of avoiding the button?

You don’t need to have everything in place in order to start. You don’t need to know everything you’re going to do, or how you’re going to to it. You don’t need to read the rest of this series, or even the rest of this post. You can start with a click track, or you can use the internal sense of tempo yo’ momma gave you. You can have the levels set wrong. You can use a crappy microphone. You can play like shit*. You can have zero ideas. And no matter what winds up on that track, you might still find something on it worth using as the foundation for a great song.

*Sensitive readers: if you don’t like the word “shit”, be forewarned that I use it a shitload in the following paragraph.

So why doesn’t everybody do this? Well, because it’s about starting with shit and turning it into greatness. But in order to do that, you have to hear the greatness in the shit. As young people, we do this naturally, sometimes to the point where we don’t even realize it’s shit. But as we get older, we only hear shit as shit, as if resigning to its shittiness somehow makes us more sophisticated. The third level of awareness, the one I’m evangelizing, is to hear both the shittiness and the greatness. You need to be able to fill in the blanks in this sentence: “This is such a shitty ______, but it would be great as a ______.” Experience teaches you how to fill the blanks. The more recording you actually do, the more happy accidents you experience, thus the fuller your bag of tricks, and subsequently the keener your ability to perceive the greatness in the shit. The only way to kickstart that cycle is to hit the button.

Are you getting the point yet? If you still have no idea what to do, I’ll spell it out. Consider this a homework assignment. Pick an instrument that you feel most comfortable with. If it’s your voice, pick your voice (although when you read the rest of the assignment, you’ll change your mind). Set aside one full hour, including setup and wrap-up time, when you will hopefully not be disturbed; but, if you must be disturbed, then promise ahead of time to use that disturbance as a source of inspiration. Record yourself improvising continuously for at least thirty minutes. HOLD THE PHONE, BUSTER, I can hear you saying, I CAN’T IMPROVISE MY WAY OUT OF A PAPER BAG. Shhh, calm down, it’s okay. You can play one chord. Get a rhythm going. When you feel like changing the chord, change it. Pick one that you know will sound good, or pick one at random. Just go with it, and no matter how bad you think your choice was, play it as if it was fantastic and you really meant it. Go back and forth between two chords. They don’t have to be super-original. When you get sick of what you’re doing, change it to something else — change the feel, change the rhythm. Do strange things with your instrument to get strange sounds out of it. But whatever you do, don’t stop, for at least thirty to forty minutes.

Now for the hard part: listen back to the whole thing, either that same day or as soon as you get a chance. You may well hate most of it. But I guarantee there will be a minute or so somewhere in the middle that makes you think, “hmm, that part actually isn’t so bad”. Feel free to delete everything else, but preserve that one little bit. Now you can loop it, play around with overdubbing something on top of it, or just take advantage of your newfound courage and record something new from scratch. It’s up to you!

Your life is rolling. Hit the button. We’ll worry about “making it good” later.