I came to this desk to type anything that flies out while I settle for a cold can of Pepsi (the Coke is sold out of the soda machine). I feel like I haven't been blogging that much and there are 2 reasons why, since I'm typing I will go ahead and write what those reasons are.
firstly, I’ve had some kind of upper respiratory infection, cold, allergies or non covid illness that fills my nose with booger cement and makes me sneeze uncontrollably fifty six or fifty seven times in a row. Its preventing me from doing much of anything, other than the other thing that’s preventing me from blogging as much as I once was.
I’m not blogging because I'm writing songs, and then blogging about writing songs, and posting the songs wherever one can post songs. i feel like i hit some kind of other level with that, and i can attribute it to a few things: really good multi-track recording software, regular writing practice, at least 15 years of music software practice, piano lessons, and Lavazza espresso K cups.
I do it like this: i open the fruity loops app on my phone, start sequencing a beat (usually 2 drum tracks simultaneously to sound like 1 good drummer). once i have a beat down i pull up one of the tone presets, put distortion on it to increase the volume (every time, first effect), usually add an LFO filter to make it wah, add a chorus if it isn't the lead and tune all of the effects to the desired tone. Now, i can really get stuck for hours making tones but once i settle on a tone, and save it to presets I use my very limited piano knowledge to build a groove inside of the dual drum tracks. once there is a loose structure I pull out my notebook and my 3 dollar pen, and start writing the words that fit inside of the groove. I try different combinations of words until it fits, sing them into a recording track, and try to get them audible among the other instruments, I find myself failing to get a decent vocal level nearly every time, but, hey, I've only been using this app for under 10 days. With the lyrics, its more about fitting in the track, and I never realize that they are about anything until the track is done. I swear to god that writing on this blog feels very good, but writing music feels infinitely better… solving the little problems of the track until it locks in, the whole trial and error process is as much fun as Tetris. I fucking cry tears of joy when it starts clicking. the more i get into it the more i get out of it.
once the vocals are in i need to doctor up a tone for a little lead, or use one i made before. BAM! do all of that a million times until it sounds ok (I would never finish anything if I didn't just settle for OK). i do a little clipping of misplaced notes and open spaces, export it, upload it on sound cloud, promote it on every platform there is, and by the time I've done that its lunch time and I'm out of creative energy for the day.
so there’s a blog post about why there aren't blog posts, and I guess that’ll do for now
