Musician Diaries

ust a quick update today. I've been working consistently in my new song, and I'm pretty sure I will make the deadline I set for myself of the day after tomorrow (unless the evil dr. Muda sends me some of its last minute fiends, one must always stay alert you know). I'm (pretty) happy with the product and with the process so far. Above all, I'm training myself in a new way of working. For example, this song has a section with irregular, non-metronome guided pauses, and along the whole month, I've dreaded the moment where I would have to do the editing. In the songs of yore, this kind of track surgery would have given me the jeebie weebies; you have to select all the tracks you've been working on, cut them at selected locations, and then drag them around. So many things can go wrong... However, this time has been easier than the previous, by far. And when a couple of mistakes did occur, I've faced them methodically as learning opportunities, and n...

(Here's a little disordered and random account of my latest recording efforts, written while I listen, omg what a relief, to music made by others... The thing that I hate the most about producing is that you cannot listen to music while you do it :P ) As the month of the RPM challenge advances -and the February Album Month if it still exists, I can never figure their website out-, I, more modestly, make my way into the first song of my song-a-month-challenge. Although on second though, I shouldn't think of it as a "challenge", as I intend to use it -the learning that it produces-, as the stepping stone to my next goal, and so on. Challenges are more like "OK, I'm finished with this, now I'll go back to my well earned rest and my routine". This one is rather a "production rate" (should I say takt time?) that I intend to establish for myself, as the new basis from which to jump to the next improvements. So where am I now? Already...

I recently stumbled with great pleasure upon this documentary about the Minutemen, a band that I only knew sparsely, and that I've been getting into more since. I love the band's mentality, their very articulated and yet down to earth philosophy; concerts should be made more available, something you can go to after work, on your way home. Bands should grow up everywhere like mushrooms. Undoubtfully, if little venues with all kind of bands playing were as numerous are ATMs are now, we would be living in a different kind of world. A part that cracks me is how excruciatingly self taught they were; this is particularly impressive considering the great technical level they achieved. In their formation years in the 70s, there wasn't Internet or other information sources available, so they spent several years playing unaware of the fact that the instruments needed to be tuned; they thought it was just a estetic peference, as in "I like my strings tight...

"Dance the orange!", said the poet Rilke. More modestly, I've been recently learning to, or rather rediscovering, how to dance the microphone. I'm in the rehearsals for the song I want to release to the atmosphere this month. Rehearsals, I've realized, are not only the moment where the bulk of value is created (the more you rehearse, the more you dig in on where the song intends to go, and also the more you liberate yourself. It is once you've automated the finger positions that the actual expression starts); not only that, but they also liberate you from undergoing later all the horrible "technical disease" of having several takes that are almost well so you have to adjust, match... all that sick but sometimes necessary microsurgery when you don't "get it right at the source". Today's rehearsal was the voice track, and the engineering works previous to the tracking were a beautiful example of how the magic of steady pr...

I had set the purpose for myself of releasing one sonic product every week till February. Mission accomplished. With that purpose, what I intended was to get myself back in the habit of releasing stuff, get the deadline adrenaline pumping, and iterating through my processes through doing, which most of the time is the only way you can obtain actual improvements on them. What next? The upcoming stake on the ground, one new song per month until the end of the year, was decided beforehand, and going through this experience hasn't shown the need to redefine it, so I'll stick to it --at least this one first month, and let's see how it goes. However, I've been doing some reflection about the way to deploy it. The delivery schedule for this blog will remain as usual: one weekly post, or rather "one post within every week". However, I'm not going to continue with the weekly sonic deliveries. Too much things are flowing, and the monthly song is going t...