Weather Vocals Wrap Up / Andrew in Town
Yet another busy week gone by.
The first half of this week was a mad rush to get vocals finalized for the song I’d been working on for the past month.
Two recurring thoughts when it comes to music:
Finishing music is a muscle that must be trained
Which musician amongst us does not have a hard drive full of unfinished songs? It’s so easy to start songs and so much easier to never finish them. I have to keep driving towards that point of unperfect but good enough.
Also it takes physical energy to make songs. At least if you’re recording and singing a lot in a session.
Musicians stand on their entire catalogue of music. Not just on a few songs here and there
I get caught up in the small details of the song—which is necessary since I’m doing most of it myself (songwriting, producing, recording for this one at least). But as I wrap up more songs I realize that each one is just a piece in the bigger puzzle. Even if I make one banging ass song (which I think I’ve done with this one) it’s just a blip on the radar.
Anyways, I’ve had to pause the music for now since Andrew’s in town for this last week and upcoming week. I’ll make a few final tweaks to the instrumental and send it off to a mixer. I cannot wait to be finished with this one. I guess I’ll take a few days (weeks?) before moving on to the next one.
I was listening to a podcast with Rick from Year of the Ox where he mentioned plans to release 2-3 projects this year. Projects!!!
Will I get to that point? Where I measure my progress in number of projects released in a year vs number of songs?
maybe…
I am getting a better sense of how much time I spend at each part of the song making process. So that’s some progress.
General thoughts for upcoming songs:
Work on controlling your breath when breathing
Find the right key to sing the song in. The balancing act between singing high enough where there’s good emotion coming through and low enough so I can actually sing it
Don’t record dozens of takes for any single vocal part. This just makes it a huge pain to comp everything
Emotion > perfection. The main goal with most vocals should be to convey an emotion or a desire. I.e. it’s not enough to just sing. Gotta sing for a reason
Work out the doubles/harmonies before starting the recording session
Andrew visiting has been a big shock to the system. I hadn’t realized how much time I was spending alone:
10AM: wake up
11AM: pop out for a coffee
6/7PM: head out for a walk around the neighborhood
8PM: cook/eat
9PM: work on music
Most of this entirely by myself with occasional sprinklings of human interaction. On weekends I’d pop out and hang out with a few friends for a couple hours. So all in all 4-5 hours hanging out with people in person and a few hours through the week on zoom calls. And this is how I’d been living since late January.
It’s interesting how normal this became for me. I’ve always enjoyed spending time alone (for the most part) but perhaps I’ve gone a bit overboard with the solitude.
So yes, a big change with Andrew visiting. We packed in a bunch of activities over the weekend (a lot has surprisingly opened up recently) including:
American Museum of Natural History (I got kinda bored after a while—I guess animals are not really my thing)
Hanging out in UWS and Central Park, eventually getting dinner at Naruto Ramen
Jamaican food from Peppa’s Jerk Chicken (Oxtail was great! Got a side of great macaroni salad as well)
Bagels at Olde Brooklyn Bagel Shoppe
Walking the Brooklyn bridge
Chelsea Market
Late night pizza at Tigers Lions and Squares
Pizza at Homeslice Pizza as well
Wandering Chinatown and getting boba
Watching a zoom wedding(!)
Delicious cookies at Levain Bakery
Hung out with a buncha friends too (ToAnnie, Frank, KFH).
I realized I gotta get my social stamina up. Get used to hanging out with people for extended periods of time again.
All in all pretty fun and packed week. I’ll save up my energy for next weekend too.
Spent a lot of time with friends this week. Did I really spend 7 hours drinking coffee? I also expected my time spent on music to be higher.
Well. At least I didn’t spend much time on Tiktok at all