(Phaysis)

It appears I’m developing a gear fetish. Been feeling the itch to make music again, and my recent acquisition of music equipment is apparently spurring that. It started years ago with a MIDI controller and a softsynth. Then, two years ago, a microphone, an audio interface and a drum machine. Then, in the past year, a mixer, a sound module, and a PC I built for audio work. That got me going for a while.

And then my latest conquests: a 1984-vintage analog synth and a 1992-vintage sampler. When I count those with my 1987-vintage non-MIDI keyboard (from high school) and my 1991 sound module, it becomes clear to me that most of my equipment was not made in this century. Meaning I can truly, without studio fakery, create the Vintage sound.

For the first time in a while, I have sonic and artistic freedom. I have outboard gear that I can tweak and explore. I’m not spending hours getting frustrated with software synths. You turn it on, turn it up, and play; it’s really exciting. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is possible, and that freaks me out. Every time I punch buttons, I should be pressing “Record”. I started doing that, calling the recordings “Noodle Sessions”, since they essentially are that. But I need to do more. Real songs, complete songs.

And that’s the problem. It’s a Thing now. I need to record. I need to make new music. Glass Door has been rather dormant this past decade, and that’s a travesty. My friend Jared demands new music, and I’d rather like to oblige him. I’d love to get the project flowing again. But I’m having difficulty.

I think one of my problems with creativity is getting it going. It’s that standing friction. Getting it rolling reduces the problem down to rolling friction, which offers much, much less resistance. Having a friend, a cohort, a fellow musician working alongside would really help. It makes sense that some of the best electronic bands are composed of two guys; one bounces ideas off of the other, and the productivity flows.

But the nexus of my creativity problem, though, stems from the source of creativity itself. From which well does creativity flow, and how does it flow? Should it flow out freely of its own accord, like an artesian well, or do you have to draw it out yourself? How do you dip your bucket to draw it out? Once it’s out, should the water pool like a lake, or flow against its constraints like a stream?

Do you punch buttons and play melodies and overlay them until you feel like you’re done, and hope for the best? That seems rather random and subject to the environment surrounding the moment of creation. Do you wait until a good idea forms, and then try muddling your way through it until you get a shadowy facsimile of what you intended? I’m between these extremes, and like the hungry mule equally between two identical stacks of hay, my creativity is dying of starvation due to the indecision.

I can only hope that I make some motion soon before the current urge to create eats itself and dies.

OK, so I lied. I’m a lying liar. I’ll be submitting a track to Anal0g.org’s Wires 7. The track is old shit, like 2002 old. Haven’t decided on which old track I’ll submit; I’m leaving that decision to Jared, who will choose 1 of 3 tracks. I tried to write something new, I really did. Fired up all the music gear, had some great ideas, but the frustration level exceeded my ability to deliver by deadline. So there it is. Glass Door will be representing again on Wires.

Worst foot forward.

So, why the frustration? Isn’t music supposed to be fun? Yes, it’s fun. I can sit at the keyboard and noodle all day. But a quirk of my personality raised its ugly head this weekend. So I can ad-lib as long as I want, but the moment I press “Record”, it all turns to shit. My playing, even though it was smooth and flowing, becomes stuttered, off-centered, mashed keys, skipped notes, the works. Fuckup after fuckup after fuckup.

The recording is in the digital domain, so it’s possible to fix it and clean it up, but doing so is tedious; it is the punishment for screwing up while recording. And there’s the frustration. It’s the same frustration I experience when I’m playing for, singing for, dancing for, performing for anyone else. If I screw up, I screw up big and my mental state changes, like a shock of panic jolts me from having the wherewithall to follow through gracefully as if the screwup was intentional.

I would be the gymnast who would walk off the mat when I inevitably smash my face during a flip. Instead of picking back up with the rhythm and playing through to the end, I’d rather stop then and settle with the low scores.

According to my friend Jared, who runs the Anal0g.org Wires music series, the submission deadline for the next Wires release, #7, is Thanksgiving day. That’s two weeks from now. Given that it took me 3 weeks last time to write “Stars In the Window” and a few more days of anguish over the sonic mix before I was finally happy with it (only to have it get messed up during the audio sweetening on the final compilation), I’m not sure I can commit to doing a track. So I’m having doubts about submitting something on this round. Just not feeling it.

I know I’ve recently put together my music rig, and I’ve had some great fun noodling with clean sounds, novel melodies, and the first interesting chord progressions in my life, but I just don’t know if I want to throw myself into the project and stress about deadlines when I have to do the same thing every day at work. Yeah yeah, I know, I know, I’m pulling the “I Have a Life” card. I have to. If Elleinad can do it, so can I.

Jared says Glass Door is a staple in the Wires series, and I’m glad he feels that way. But I’m not convinced enough this round to commit to a new track. Sorry, old friend. A little less radio silence on the chat front could’ve helped.

Last week, I bought a microphone. Picked up a Shure SM57, a mic stand and a cable for a bill and a half. I intended to take my new toy home and immediately start playing with it, but after hooking it up, crafting a pop screen out of a bent coat hanger and a nylon stocking, giving it a test shout, and taking pictures, I kinda let it sit.

Until friday night. I’d already spent some time doing some work at the coffeeshop before I left to see a movie, so after the movie I went back to see who was there to chat with. But the people I knew were busy with their own thing. So I went home just after midnight, and something inside pulled me to my music gear. I decided I’d had enough with the “buying expensive gear and letting it collect dust” kick I’ve been on for the past year, so I turned it all on and started pecking.

It’s all babysteps at this point, but I’m learning my tools. I have Sonar loaded on a laptop with a few VSTs and effects installed. I have my outboard USB audio interface, flat-panel display, a MIDI controller, and my drum machine. And now I have my mic. So I powered it all on and started learning. Learned how to drag an mp3 into the project and lay down some vocal tracks on top. Learned that my mic really needs a preamp because it’s way too quiet for the audio interface. Learned that my interface is hissy if you turn the levels up. Learned that it’s easy enough to lay down multiple vocal takes in Sonar, and that using compressor -> light chorus -> reverb sounds incredible on vocals. Babysteps.

My ultimate goal is to hammer out this song that’s been haunting me for the past few months. I wrote a poem some time back that just spilled out into a rhythmic flow, and the more I worked on it, the more I could hear a melody, a rhythm, bassline, vocal harmonies. It’s stuck in my head, and I gotta get it out and down on track. I usually forget melodies, but this one is holding on. I’m afraid of it dropping away, but with as much mindshare as it’s taken up, I doubt it’s going away anytime soon.

I do worry about that, but I also worry about spending so much time and effort and hope and hype on this song that I don’t notice if it sounds awful until it’s too late. I’ve been told time and again to never fall in love with my own work; the lesson of Pygmalion is one that I forget often. But as long as I know and understand that I don’t have a modern music production studio, that I don’t have technical expertise, that I don’t have the years of musical experience to pull it all together with a professional radio-ready polish, and that I shouldn’t worry if it doesn’t sound like that, I should be ok. It’s only a demo; demos are important, but they’re not the final product. It’s my baby, and I should love it as I should love all my other babies, but babies grow up and move on.

Babysteps.

Ladies and Gents, it is with great pleasure that I announce the overdue release of Anal0g.org’s Wires 6 compilation, featuring a track by yours truly. Go there and download the album now before the bytes run out (if you don’t know how to save a zip file and play the mp3s inside, get your daughter to do it for you).

I say overdue because the compilation is, for the first time ever, 5 months late. There were certain confounding factors that all added up to the major delay. The last call for submissions was Halloween of last year. Some of us barely got our tracks in under the wire; however, most of the artists didn’t turn in their stuff until well after the deadline, which delayed the production schedule.

The tracks were then handed off to a volunteer member of the anal0g.org crew who had the skill and equipment to properly master everything for volume, punch, and presence. Well, he took his time. And our time. And everybody else’s time. But finally he finished everything and sent the polished tracks back to be packaged and presented.

I got the message yesterday that the compilation was finished and posted and I’ve been listening as much as possible. So far, I’m really digging the music. Some inventive stuff on here; the future of electronic music, I think. Give it a spin and give a shout.