Record an album

I’ve been making a lot of progress lately with recording and developing the songs. One song is completely recorded, ready to release – and I’m very happy with it, which is a huge step in itself. Another is almost there, just needs some tweaking. The rest are all partially recorded and mostly need work on the lyrics to be ready to finish the recording.
1. Tomato 100% done
2. Mountain 95% done
3. SEF 60% done
4. Spinning 50% done
5. Remind Me 30% done
6. La La La 30% done
7. Leroy 40% done
8. Natalia 90% done (but want to re-record it)
9. Hush 30% done
10. Slovakia 35% done

Most importantly, every time I’ve stepped into the music room recently, I’ve been having fun just making music. It’s taken some time to get my where I am now about this project (from obsessed with getting it done just to get it done out of some made up obligation, and beating myself up for not finishing it), but it is a great place to be. Completion of the project is turning from just a someday dream into a reality that I am living into.

First I have to acknowledge that I didn’t finish the album by the date I had set, Feb. 14th. So there is no deadline anymore and that’s fine with me.

Until now, I have been doing all of my recording at home, monitoring only with some mid-range quality Sony headphones. This was a HUGE blunder! I realized that monitoring this way isn’t going to get me the best results, and it’s really fun to hear the recordings over some speakers, so after researching studio reference monitors for about a week, I invested in some used KRK Rokit 8s. When I hooked everything up, 80% of my tracks and mixes sounded TERRIBLE!!! I could really tell when the levels were off on vocal and guitar recordings, and there were a lot of mistakes/tone problems I couldn’t hear before. Most of my work up until now is going to have to be redone or just tossed. But it was SO MUCH FUN to hear everything through these speakers. Now I can’t wait to get going and make it sound great. Having quality monitors is so important… I can’t believe I’ve waited so long and invested so much effort without them.

I’m most of the way done writing and recording a decent album. I have all the songs, most of the lyrics, and a lot of the recording done. But it has been an enormous struggle almost every step of the way.

One thing I’ve had to face up to is that maybe recording a masterpeice album isn’t what I’m really interested in, but that I really just want to prove to other people and to myself that I am talented. That creates a great struggle within me, because with that conversation as the background, nothing ever seems good enough to put out there. I find myself finishing recording a song and just editing little changes over and over again, spending days on the same thing before I can move on. My obsession with looking good has taken all the fun out of making music, which is why I started in the first place. It has also cost me in other areas of my life, because I feel like I can’t move on to the next big thing in my life until this great album is complete. And it costs the other people in my life, because I am not available to be supportive of other people’s dreams as long as I am so stuck in mine never getting done.

The possibility I am creating today is the possibility of creating music joyfully and effortlessly. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the self-imposed deadline of February 14th. It would be great to have an album done by then, but to be honest, if I’m creating music joyfully and effortlessly, I don’t care how long it takes.

I’ve been making huge progress lately. Finally got a complicated drum track complete for one of the songs, and have a tentative song list. The things I most need to refine are the lyrics, but I have a lot of power in making this a reality right now. I love how the strat sounds plugged directly into the interface, with some reverb and delay it’s simple and clean and gets it done.

I’ve had a lot going on in the rest of my life that has made it difficult to work on the album… most notably, friends staying over, so I had to clear out the room I was using as a studio for them to stay in. The other night I set it all back up, and yesterday an idea just flowed into my head and I was able to make the beginning of a great recording – the first one I’ve done on this project that I’m very very excited about. That was a huge moment. I find that I’m having less trouble coming up with lyric and melody ideas and more trouble getting the whole song complete and all the parts recorded. That was a lot easier when I was recording with bands, we would collaborate on the arrangements and practice them live before recording. And of course I didn’t have to worry about the drums and bass parts. Seems like it’s going to take quite a bit of work to complete these songs, but I’m encouraged by the progress. Maybe I’ll try a different approach next time I have an idea and try to arrange it before recording any of it. Pro Tools actually makes it very easy to arrange a song.

I finally learned how to use MIDI and Plug Ins in Pro Tools from the exercises in my book. I have to say it was absolutely worth the effort, it will make arrangements so much easier on the CD. I had such a huge mental block about learning to use all the functions in Pro Tools properly, and especially MIDI, so I’m glad that is cleared away now. It literally took me years to overcome my “fear” of MIDI… all that stuff looked like Chinese to me so I just ignored it.

Hit a bump because a friend will be coming to stay in 2 weeks so I’ll have to clean out the studio room and put everything on hold for those few days, but that’s OK.

I have named my project and I really like it. Today I was thinking about some of the artwork I would like to have in the sleeve.

One thing I need to improve on is how I record my ideas. At least 2-3 times a week a tune will pop into my head out of nowhere and I have been failing to record it so I can finish the idea when I have time. The other day I woke up with a new song in my head. My mini tape player wasn’t ready to go and it would have taken too much time to set up the computer, so I quickly transcribed the guitar parts and the main lyric on a piece of paper. I got home at the end of the day and had no memory of how it was supposed to sound, even with my notes. That happened again yesterday, and it is really frustrating to have a cool sound come to you and then forget it. Today I’m going to get my mini tape recorder set up with new batteries and a blank tape so that doesn’t keep happening.

I’m on chapter 4 of the book “Pro Tools for Musicians” and it has opened up a whole new world for me as far as my knowledge of recording and editing. I recorded a couple of great songs with Pro Tools before, but now I can start really unleashing its full power. The book is a bit pricey at $30, but I highly recommend it. I’m going to finish it in the next two weeks and do all the exercises.

Also, I’ve cleared up some other things in my life to open up the space to create music. That part of the process is as essential as having a mic or a song to sing. Now I won’t be thinking about paying the credit card bill when I’m writing.

The home studio is ready:
Room set aside just for music near the bathroom (to record vocs)
PC set aside just for music
MBox with Pro Tools and extra long USB cord
MIDI Controller
Beautiful condenser mic
Sketch pad
Guitars… lots of them.
Ukulele
All the desire in the world

It took a lot of investment and time to get all that, and man am I grateful to have been able to get it all together. It’s all coming along… finally. Right now I’m still setting things up but I should be rolling by this weekend.

The goal is to have finished all recording by Jan 1, 2007.

I recorded 2 albums with bands in college, and recorded single songs since, but never been able to finish an album. It’s been a dream / nudging thought in the back of my mind for 6 years. I have a friend who is pretty good at guitar and has good equipment that really wants to join the project, it’s just a matter of me getting “unstuck” and doing it.

Why do I want to do it? I feel like I still have a lot more music in me that I want to express. I love the feeling of finishing a recording. I love having something tangible that I created and can have and listen back on forever. And I love sharing something I am proud of and that I know rocks with other people. And, I would like to make a kick ass website and myspace page for my new project.

At this point, I need a basic outline of what I want to do, how to do it, who I want involved, and a timeline to complete it. I’ll get those basic ideas down this week, and report back next Sunday with it all.

It’s funny, in college, recording with my bands seemed so easy to organize and execute… but since leaving, it just hasn’t happened, even though a couple of times I wanted it so bad I tried to force it out of myself.

I really want this.