![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the long-delayed
Dec. 10th, 2009 10:41 pmI'm recording again. It's been several weeks, with a big idle period caused by all sorts of things - thanksgiving, a housemate moving out which created noises at inconvenient times, NaNoteWriMo - but...
...while I hate how long this has taken and how many false starts there have been and how much time I've wasted, and even given how frustrated (and occasionally disgusted) I am with all of that...
...I think the actual album is going to be a lot better for it. Some of that is a song or two which weren't going to be on it, but will now, because they exist now. I think they're good, and that matters. And a lot of it has been dealing with the recording studio learning curve: learning how to set up a minimal recording space and actually use it, learning about equipment (particularly from picking the brain of Monkey of Monkey Brains Studios - hi Tony! I don't know how to do an LJ:User from Dreamwidth! ^_^ ) and... someone I can't link to because he has no online presence I know of. That sort of thing.
And some of it is that, like you'd expect, I'm a better musician than I was last year at this time. I mean, last December, I'd been playing mandolin just under a year, and I hadn't picked up an Irish bouzouki yet, much less composed for one. On one hand, I really wonder why I had any business thinking it was time to make a demo, but on the other hand, I had people asking for one, so there you are.
Also, a year spent on and off banging my head against all this stuff... I mean, sure, it'd probably take less time to learn what I have were I starting now, but it'd still take a bunch of time, so that's probably a wash. I don't know.
But really it's all about my voice.
I don't really post about it, but I have a lot of voice issues. When I was in hospital a few years ago - I was hit by a car while out biking - one of the things the doctors asked me was how I talked, and what kind of freakish throat surgery I'd had, and why. (short answers; "uh, whut?" and "none, what're you on about?"1) I also have a lot of trauma and abuse issues that I also don't talk about much in public, but they intersect here, too. For a long time, I mostly just didn't sing.
I started to play and sing again after the accident. Sometimes I wonder whether the head injury caused all that, but if it did, well, at least something good came out. (And not just blood!) I signed up for first-year singing instruction at school, and I'm really proud of the 4.0 I got from my first-year jury. In a chorus, I was... genuinely okay. lj:kathrynt helped with that. And I had a couple of opportunities from there which I'm really, really happy to have on my resume.
But solo... I still sucked. More specifically: my tone sucked. And, singing alone, I'd get discouraged and back off.
Trying to record has, I think, forced me to face more some of that, and really deal with it. I'm still not where I want to be, but a couple of times this past year - mostly while trying to work on recording, I can't lie - I've figured out things. Muscle things, stress things, air column things, physical and mental things that I can fix. And when I have, people have gone, "woah, you got a lot better all at once."
I sing a lot more in Anna's jams lately. I figured out something in the fall that built on something I'd figured out in the summer.
I've been working this week on "Artefacts (You'll Never See)."2 If you want to pick a song of mine that exposes all the worst parts of my voice, pick this one. (Similarly, if I can get this one right, I can get any of them right.)
A few days ago... I figured something else out. Since then I've been trying to do it consistently as well as I did it on the best parts of that recording. The good quality I like was fading in and out, that first time, and only really, really right a few times. I want it all the time.
I'm about 60% there, now, I think. I don't know how long it'll take to get to 100%, but this is the first time I've been excited about being in the studio. Maybe I'm partly riding the high from OMG NANOTEWRIMO WIN! but I think having the possibility of sounding really, genuinely okay is helping too. I think I can do a lot with a singing voice that sounds okay. I really do.
1: "I... open my mouth and sounds come out. It works for me!" No, really, that's what I said. Probably not the best idea given that I was under observation in the neuro ward at the time due to my head injuries, but, well, I did it for teh lulz. For the record: no surgery that I know about. If there are aliens or government agents with flashy little forget-me lights involved, you'll need to ask them!
2: Playing a bass line on an Irish bouzouki with the octave strings still on is... odd. But I think I like it. I also think I like playing bass, or, you know, pseudo electric-bass-like bass as played on a completely different instrument. I think I want to get somebody's trashed electric guitar bass and retune or restring it to GDAE just to see what it sounds like. I don't like playing guitar but I do like the instruments I play and I'm thinking I'd like the electric guitar bass, particularly (mostly?) if I fucked with it to make it have 5ths. Can you even do that? I don't know.
...while I hate how long this has taken and how many false starts there have been and how much time I've wasted, and even given how frustrated (and occasionally disgusted) I am with all of that...
...I think the actual album is going to be a lot better for it. Some of that is a song or two which weren't going to be on it, but will now, because they exist now. I think they're good, and that matters. And a lot of it has been dealing with the recording studio learning curve: learning how to set up a minimal recording space and actually use it, learning about equipment (particularly from picking the brain of Monkey of Monkey Brains Studios - hi Tony! I don't know how to do an LJ:User from Dreamwidth! ^_^ ) and... someone I can't link to because he has no online presence I know of. That sort of thing.
And some of it is that, like you'd expect, I'm a better musician than I was last year at this time. I mean, last December, I'd been playing mandolin just under a year, and I hadn't picked up an Irish bouzouki yet, much less composed for one. On one hand, I really wonder why I had any business thinking it was time to make a demo, but on the other hand, I had people asking for one, so there you are.
Also, a year spent on and off banging my head against all this stuff... I mean, sure, it'd probably take less time to learn what I have were I starting now, but it'd still take a bunch of time, so that's probably a wash. I don't know.
But really it's all about my voice.
I don't really post about it, but I have a lot of voice issues. When I was in hospital a few years ago - I was hit by a car while out biking - one of the things the doctors asked me was how I talked, and what kind of freakish throat surgery I'd had, and why. (short answers; "uh, whut?" and "none, what're you on about?"1) I also have a lot of trauma and abuse issues that I also don't talk about much in public, but they intersect here, too. For a long time, I mostly just didn't sing.
I started to play and sing again after the accident. Sometimes I wonder whether the head injury caused all that, but if it did, well, at least something good came out. (And not just blood!) I signed up for first-year singing instruction at school, and I'm really proud of the 4.0 I got from my first-year jury. In a chorus, I was... genuinely okay. lj:kathrynt helped with that. And I had a couple of opportunities from there which I'm really, really happy to have on my resume.
But solo... I still sucked. More specifically: my tone sucked. And, singing alone, I'd get discouraged and back off.
Trying to record has, I think, forced me to face more some of that, and really deal with it. I'm still not where I want to be, but a couple of times this past year - mostly while trying to work on recording, I can't lie - I've figured out things. Muscle things, stress things, air column things, physical and mental things that I can fix. And when I have, people have gone, "woah, you got a lot better all at once."
I sing a lot more in Anna's jams lately. I figured out something in the fall that built on something I'd figured out in the summer.
I've been working this week on "Artefacts (You'll Never See)."2 If you want to pick a song of mine that exposes all the worst parts of my voice, pick this one. (Similarly, if I can get this one right, I can get any of them right.)
A few days ago... I figured something else out. Since then I've been trying to do it consistently as well as I did it on the best parts of that recording. The good quality I like was fading in and out, that first time, and only really, really right a few times. I want it all the time.
I'm about 60% there, now, I think. I don't know how long it'll take to get to 100%, but this is the first time I've been excited about being in the studio. Maybe I'm partly riding the high from OMG NANOTEWRIMO WIN! but I think having the possibility of sounding really, genuinely okay is helping too. I think I can do a lot with a singing voice that sounds okay. I really do.
1: "I... open my mouth and sounds come out. It works for me!" No, really, that's what I said. Probably not the best idea given that I was under observation in the neuro ward at the time due to my head injuries, but, well, I did it for teh lulz. For the record: no surgery that I know about. If there are aliens or government agents with flashy little forget-me lights involved, you'll need to ask them!
2: Playing a bass line on an Irish bouzouki with the octave strings still on is... odd. But I think I like it. I also think I like playing bass, or, you know, pseudo electric-bass-like bass as played on a completely different instrument. I think I want to get somebody's trashed electric guitar bass and retune or restring it to GDAE just to see what it sounds like. I don't like playing guitar but I do like the instruments I play and I'm thinking I'd like the electric guitar bass, particularly (mostly?) if I fucked with it to make it have 5ths. Can you even do that? I don't know.
