Participate in NaSoAlMo 2007

So I didn’t win. I recorded around 15 minutes of stuff most of which felt unfinished.

Along the way, I’ve learned a lot and genuinely enjoyed myself so it was definitely worth it.

I learned that I need to manage my time better, and I came up with some ways to do this, if a little late in the game.

At least I got something down, and I will be back on the horse next year.

The third time might not have been the charm, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. It’s done!

I thought the five-day weekend was going to be magical. I’d write a whole slew of new songs, they’d be brilliant, I’d scrap everything I’d done so far and emerge with the best songs I’d ever done. Then I realized that that was the wrong attitude to take during NaSoAlMo. Last year the pressure on myself to make good songs, which is not really possible for me at this pace, messed with my head. And I realized I didn’t want to let that happen this year. So by Friday I’d decided to throw in the towel on songwriting, and just concentrate on making the existing stuff sound as good as possible. I rested, I socialized, I mixed a little, I relaxed. As is standard during the final days of the challenge, I am consumed with embarrassment about the songs. But I’m keeping my spirits up. Yesterday I reasoned that there are two possibilities, both positive. The first is that I don’t let anyone else hear the album, and therefore I have nothing to be embarrassed about. The second possibility is that I stay in such a good mood that I won’t let the embarrassment get to me, so I put the songs online. Even if I’m not in the latter state, as the steward of the competition, I want to release the songs purely out of principle. So I probably will. I scrapped A Minor Chord, Love Story, and NaNoWriMo Fight Song, leaving the current playlist at eighteen songs, just about 29:30:

Number One Rock Song
Sixteen Minutes
Fast Food Blues
B.C. Runner
Enunciation Breakdown
Brain Eats Heart
Cousin (formerly Riverboat Gambler)
Having Hadn’t Had
Rhyme with Orange
Fifty Ways (Paul Simon cover)
I Won’t Crack
What the Devil
Taking It On
Out of Ideas
Twenty-Third Day
Down to the Wire
November is Over
Next Halloween

Like I mentioned before, I want to go through the songs and make them better for a real album. But for the purpose of NaSoAlMo, let’s call this thing done. The MP3s are here. When I have a real album, I’ll probably take them down. Enjoy!

As I write this, I see the quote in the right column of this 43things page. It says:

“All you have to do, is decide what to do with the time that is given you.”
- Gandalf, Lord of the Rings

That gets right to the heart of how I accomplished this goal.

After a short trip to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family, I spent this evening dealing with a hard drive that wouldn’t stop chugging. It was slowing my desktop computer down and really worrying me. It made backing up files very slow-going, too. I backed up a bunch before I left for my Thanksgiving trip on Wednesday, and finished backing up tonight. Now I need to remember to do it before there’s a problem.

I was able to make the hard drive problem stop by restoring the system back a couple of weeks. Maybe I picked up a virus or other malicious thing that my anti-virus and anti-other-malicious-things software programs don’t recognize.

This problem wouldn’t have stopped me finishing my album since I don’t use my desktop for recording, but it would have been a huge distraction. I can’t feel at peace when my computer is sick.

I’ve been listening to the eight songs I’ve “finished”, and there’s only one that I’m completely happy with. I’ve made notes about how to fix the rest. Fixes range from “stereo spread the guitar” to “re-record the whole darn thing.”

Most of these things are picky things, though. The voice of the inner critic that NaSoAlMo is intended to silence. So the plan is to finish the last song, “When Anaiya Smiles,” this coming weekend, and declare NaSoAlMo done based on the tracks as they are now.

After that, I have a wonderful set of songs to start with for my very first ever, recorded all by myself, real live solo album that I can send to CD Baby to sell and eventually see it show up on iTunes.

I’ve learned so much about recording and mixing over the last month, and I feel confident I can continue to learn. I can probably resurrect some of the things I started long before November and never could finish and maybe write a song or two more from scratch. Then perhaps even re-record some of my older songs that I recorded with an ex-boyfriend and make them my own again.

Such possibilities. :)

Tonight, I recorded a small string part on the chorus of “When Anaiya Smiles” and played around with a guitar solo. This will be a very simple track.

Must-see rock shows, must-attend birthday parties, and must-catch-up friends from out of town kept me pretty distracted from the album this weekend. It’s funny to be in such an obsessive state that I consider it a lost weekend even though I probably put a good fifteen hours or so into tracking and mixing. I did lots of rewrites, tracked a few solos, finished a rough draft of “Having Hadn’t Had” and wrote “Love Story”, but the latter might be too cheeseball, even for me, even with a punchline. If I keep it, I think I’m at about 24 minutes now. With a four-day weekend coming up and the option of doing a cover, I’m still feeling pretty comfortably ahead of pace. I also found a little vintage (ungrounded) Fender Vibro-Champ at Trading Musician and the periodic electrocutions it delivers while recording have been very exciting.

Number One Rock Song
Sixteen Minutes
Having Hadn’t Had
Fast Food Blues
NaNoWriMo Fight Song
Love Story
B.C. Runner
Enunciation Breakdown
Brain Eats Heart
A Minor Chord
Cousin
What the Devil
Twenty-Third Day
Next Halloween

Recorded another 3 minutes or so of stuff. I’m not thinking about the deadline anymore, I’m just thinking about finding time to do it and working out how to do it. Sounds very mechanical and all instrumental so far.

I’ve found that scheduling time and setting a time limit help. Like, I’m going to record Monday night for an hour. This marks out time for me where I don’t feel pressure to be doing something else and it stops me being distracted half way through, because I can postpone things until after the hour is up.

My creative muscle feels a little weak, but then I rarely overburden it.

I should be in bed since it’s a work day tomorrow, but I couldn’t stop messing with the music until I had an MP3 of Blind Ignorance to listen to. This is the first song I’ve experienced equipment problems on. I kept getting a dropout in Cakewalk (meaning the playback would stop unexpectedly) during the very short instrumental interlude. I was able to mix the song to a file, though. I’ll listen to all the songs tomorrow, and see if there are any lingering sound problems I can’t live with. There’s a lot of noise during the short instrumental interlude in Blind Ignorance, but given the problems it gives me in Cakewalk, I’m not sure I want to deal with re-recording it right now. It could be a real time sink.

All that’s left is recording vocals for When Anaiya Smiles, add other instruments as desired and mix and master it. Then all that’s left is extra icing on this cake if I want it.

I finished “I Don’t Wanna Be” and “The Housewife’s Lament” this afternoon. I have two songs left to deal with: “Blind Ignorance” and “When Anaiya Smiles.” I still need to record the vocals for Anaiya because I got too sick to sing before I finished it. I’m not sure I quite finished the guitar on that one, either. I’ll probably work on Blind tonight after I run get something to eat. _{I’m not really going to run. I’m going to drive.}

I might be an overachiever and do another song before the month is over. I don’t know if I have another one in me right now, but I can try with no pressure at all.

Titles and times:
NaSoAlMo 1: Madam Mam’s Thai Cuisine 3:04
NaSoAlMo 2: Salt and Pepper 3:13
NaSoAlMo 3: Tell Him No 3:30
NaSoAlMo 4: I Don’t Wanna Be 1:36
NaSoAlMo 5: The Housewife’s Lament (traditional folk song) 3:01
NaSoAlMo 6: Blind Ignorance 3:49
NaSoAlMo 7: Lunch with Brian 4:20
NaSoAlMo 8: Dear, Dear Adam 4:12
NaSoAlMo 9: When Anaiya Smiles 3:14

29:59 minutes