AuthorI'm a high school English teacher who hasn't quite given up his dream of being a rock star. Archives
October 2022
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Of Weddings and Sicknesses10/16/2022 The third week of Genius Hour came with it a few complications. At the beginning of this week, I presumed that the only thing that would keep me from getting recording work done was my wife's cousin's wedding. And then I got sick.
That sounded much more ominous than intended. I'm fine, but I did end up missing the wedding because whatever 24-hour something that entered my system completely drained me of energy. And you'd think that maybe I could have taken advantage of that by taking some time while left at my wife's grandmother's place to do some recording, but I didn't bring any of my equipment with me since I presumed I would be too busy to work on any music. Oh well. Live and learn. So, as this week is ending, I'm taking some time to reflect on what I've accomplished so far. For whatever reason, it was really difficult for me to settle on a continuation of this project this semester. I think part of it is because my efforts at songwriting really left me feeling unfulfilled when I completed my last project. I struggled to write complete versions of songs that I felt proud of, both from a writing and recording standpoint. This is partially why I've generally been trying to focus on recording covers this time around, and while I've made some progress by getting most of the instrumental sections recorded of "Nightmare" by Avenged Sevenfold, I feel like I'm hitting a bit of an impasse that's putting into focus the limitations of my skills. To address this problem, my plan this week is to at least use my guitar to record an approximation of the song's vocals and track the bass on top of that. I may end up then giving this song a rest on the recording front for a bit while I work up the solo. Following this, I will likely move on to recording another song just to keep practicing with capturing different tones. My wife has recently mentioned to me a sort of challenge she'd like us to complete where we work on playing a new song together every week. Perhaps as I'm working up these songs for jamming with her I can also try to get some good quality recordings created of those tracks. From there, I have a chance of being able to capture her vocals, which could definitely be fun. We'll see how that goes. Tune in next week to see what happens.
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A "Nightmare" Experience10/9/2022 Welcome back to the second week of this semester's Genius Hour experience. My goal this time around is decidedly less intense than the one I set for myself previously to exclusively record original music. And none of this is to say that I don't still want to leave room to work on original pieces, but listening back to much of what I have written and recorded already has not left me feeling particularly accomplished.
So the goal this past week was to prepare myself for really tackling this project in earnest. To that end, I decided to take some time to re-establish a baseline for my skills when it comes to recording music in general. I had recently been on a bit of an Avenged Sevenfold kick and decided I would make an effort to record a bit of their 2010 song "Nightmare" off the album of the same name. As of this week, I have recorded all the rhythm guitar parts and programmed the drums. Being that I am not a particularly talented singer (and by that I mean I'm not good at all), my next plan is to use my guitar to layer in the vocal melodies and put on top of that the bass part before learning the solos. From a performance standpoint, the solos will be the most difficult piece of the recording, but ultimately this project is not just about improving my playing; it's about making the recordings themselves sound more professional overall. Once I have completed this recording just going off the skills I have currently developed, I will plan to start going back through the Home Studio Master Class to get more specific feedback on the skills I need to work on to make my recordings sound better overall.
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Sixteen years ago this Christmas, I received my first guitar, a quite low quality Les Paul knockoff that came with a tiny amp to start my musical journey. A year later over my winter break from school, I upgraded that guitar and amp and found myself sitting in the living room of my parent's house trying to play something that sounded vaguely like Metallica when I stumbled upon something new — something different.
In my attempts to figure out one piece of one song, I had inadvertently written my own guitar riff. The thrill I felt in that moment was overwhelming. I couldn't believe that I had finally done it. I spent the next three to four hours playing that riff over and over again, writing it down on paper so I could later transfer it to the software I had been using to learn songs for the past year. And in that moment, after hours upon hours of work, when I had the full song and riffs written in my program (along with a rough bassline), I felt so accomplished. Of course, my mom woke up the next morning and asked me what I was playing the night before. When I told her it was something I had made up, you could tell that she was trying to choose her next words carefully. While I don't remember exactly what she said now, the essence of the sentiment has persisted all these years. She didn't like it. She was already annoyed by it after less than 24 hours of its existence. I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought it sounded great! I was proud of it. It was something that was completely my own. Yet that comment lived rent-free in my mind for years afterwards, both inspiring me to try and make more music (I still wanted my mom's approval) and making me second-guess everything that I was creating. Sixteen years later, I do have to say that my mom was, in fact, in the right. The riff was terrible. It was repetitive, it was plodding, and it had no life. Since then, I have written over 200 unique riffs and song ideas, and in the years intervening I have actually come up with quite a few pieces of music that I am proud of. So why have so few people ever heard anything I've written? Why have only a few people in my life ever heard me play the music I enjoy the most? The answer is complicated. To have people hear me play anything that I enjoy, I would need to play live for them. But playing live requires a band, and I've never had a lot of luck in that regard. And even at times I have, I have rarely played the music I have liked. I have almost never had an opportunity to write with others. And I have almost never had a chance to have all these things coalesce at one time. Hence my desire over the past few years to learn about recording music. My thought is pretty straightforward: if I want people to hear me play the music I like, I have to learn how to record myself playing at a high level with high quality audio that requires as little coordination with others as possible. Of course, the problem is that recording, mixing, and mastering music is incredibly difficult, and even having spent the past couple of years learning how to do so, I still have not created a recording that I consider to be of high enough quality to release to anybody. So that's where this project comes in. In the early stages of my recording endeavors, I learned what equipment I needed and the essentials of how to record using the new hardware and software at my disposal. My goal now is to learn how to record this music at a level to where it will actually sound good and to where I can be proud to show off what I've done to others. How will I accomplish this? 1. I will complete the Home Studio Masterclass that I paid for two years ago in the hopes of learning how to record music more efficiently. I made it halfway through the course when I bought it, but the more time I spent with it, the more I felt like I was in over my head. Having had other time to engage in trial and error, I feel much better equipped to tackle this challenge. 2. I will use the information from this class to both edit and improve existing recordings sitting on my hard drive. I will also put an effort into recording new covers of songs that I want to try my hand at creating for the sake of practicing my skills outside the scope of the course. 3. If time permits and I am able to also do some upgrading of my equipment (mostly my computer and some of my other recording software), I will try to create a video of me playing one of my new recordings as a more public exhibition of what I have learned. In doing so, I will combine the skills I've learned from the past couple of years of completing Genius Hour to have something that is a combination of all these goals. I'm excited to see what will happen when I put myself in a position where I have to follow through. There is no expectation this time that I will work on original music. I will instead focus on getting the best recordings. If more songwriting happens in the process, that will be great, but that's not the goal this time.
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Week 7: The Bottle4/15/2022 Since the start of this project, I have been set on trying to finish a song. I promised three at the beginning, but I told myself from the start that I'd be happy with one good pre-production draft. And in all honestly, I thought I knew what the song would be — "Dying Light." It was the one that was already mostly written before the project started, the one I was most excited about. And yet for the past few weeks, I've been stuck on figuring out so many of the other pieces of the song. A part of me feels that maybe it's because I've heard the instrumental part so many times that I've solidified this arrangement as being more or less the final version, which is one reason why I can't get the lyrics and melodies to jive as well with what I already have. Regardless, this roadblock led me to get away from writing altogether for about a week or so, instead turning my attention to learning songs from artists I like and just working on my guitar chops overall. As part of this process, I found myself listening to a lot of music and taking in the sounds of songs I like by artists I respect. And then, the moment happened: I caught lightning in a bottle and over the course of two days wrote all the lyrics and rough melodies and chord progressions for a completely different song. This Week's Progress: SongwritingProving that no song ever starts in the same place as another, the genesis of the new piece I'm tentatively calling "Your Truth" came about from listening to a bunch of Breaking Benjamin and Rise Against songs. I would say Rise Against was definitely more of an influence on this one lyrically and harmonically, but that doesn't mean that I want to discount some of the other factors influencing its composition. After listening to a lot of these more up-tempo songs, I decided to plug in my guitar and just start jamming on a C# power chord and just moved around to different chords in and around the key of C# minor. I figured out the tempo as roughly 194 bpm, set the metronome, and just started recording variations of those progressions until I had what I assumed was probably a verse and chorus, though I couldn't have told you what was what. From there, a lyric idea came to me that seemed like it might or might not go with the parts I had just written. Despite this, I decided to write it down anyway since a good lyric is a good lyric. So on my Word document with lyric ideas sat this new line: "Hacks in Congress / Never speaking for us / Legislate on outrage/ Culture wars they enflame." I loved this idea and felt it definitely captured that pseudo-rebellious Rise Against tone that seemed in keeping with what I was jamming, so I crafted a rough chord progression that could go underneath those lines, one that ended up gelling surprisingly well with all the other parts I had already written. So, seeing as I was on a roll, I just went with it and followed those lyrics to see where they would end up. I don't know how much the lyrics themselves really represent my beliefs and how much is just me finding lines that seem to complement the first things I wrote. But regardless, I'm learning not to question where a song wants to go. If I've found the path of least resistance, I'm going to follow it. I feel that's definitely important to emphasize here sine there are some charged statements in the words themselves. Nothing that I feel is libelous or salacious, but they definitely reflect a particular worldview on the part of the narrator. And as I do my own little analysis of the lyrics at this stage, it seems as if maybe the narrator of this story has a lot of things right, but that perhaps even he is a bit misguided on the motivations of those he is criticizing. So maybe there is an inherent tragedy in the voice of the song's narrator and the way he interprets those who don't believe the way he does. I'll live with these lyrics for a bit and see if I can figure out what they're trying to say. Maybe there's some other angle I'm not seeing yet because I'm so close to the material. Some Stats
A Draft of Lyrics (For Those Who Stuck Around)Your Truth (Working Title)
They say that those who never lived Are worth more than one who gives Disregard the circumstance They should’ve known better Than to take a chance They say that kids can’t understand How a girl could some day be a man So hide from them the truth that is Their life and who they are Turn them into sin Hacks in Congress Never speaking for us Legislate on outrage Culture wars they enflame Manufacture rage Line their pockets off pain Don’t matter who dies As long as they thrive Justify the lies and call them love Mandates dictated from those above Never question what we all must do Every action taken for you Saves you From yourself This lie becomes your truth They say we’ll cancel all who dare Let virtue guide them anywhere The moral fabric of their lives A garment all should wear Or they won’t survive They say that we’re not worshipers We’re deviants and murders Projection is the party line A truth that will reveal in time Misinform the masses Burn the truth to ashes Ever praying that The master hears what you’re saying Justify the rage Burning through the page That condemns all you say The truth standing in your way Justify the lies and call them love Mandates dictated from those above Never question what we all must do Every action taken for you Saves you From yourself This lie becomes your truth Reignite the passion Waning from inaction Never resting cause The flame dies if no one’s listening You'd throw them all away As long as you'd have your day In the spotlight The last flight From heights never seen Justify the lies and call them love Mandates dictated from those above Never question what we all must do All your agency we take from you Justify the lies and call them love Mandates dictated from those above Never question what we all must do Every action taken for you Saves you From yourself This lie becomes your truth (this lie becomes) This lie becomes your truth (this lie becomes) This truth becomes
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Week 6: Come Cover Me4/5/2022 Since I felt like I needed a bit of a win this week, I found myself gravitating towards a sort of musical comfort food for me: learning songs and recording covers. On paper, this didn't really help me make progress on songwriting, but it did make me feel a bit better about my musical endeavors in general. So, this isn't really a blog about all the great successes I've had with songwriting, but rather a representation of where my head is right now and what I need to do to reset myself when I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. By the end of this project, I'm hoping to go through all the stock photos of stressed people I can find. Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash This Week's Progress: Songwriting & RecordingProgress does continue on "Dying Light" and its chorus section. There are so many variation on the lyrics at this point, and I just don't know which one makes the most sense for the song (assuming any of them are good). So, with that being said, maybe I can outsource this a bit more. Tell me, do any of the below sound halfway decent? I'm not married to any particular sequence or combination.
This Week's Progress: VocalsAs has become my sort of Saturday ritual of late, I did take some time to do more vocal warm ups and practice my singing. Since I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by the choruses I was struggling to write, I instead went through old recordings I had done, and stumbled upon an instrumental cover I did of "Chapter Four" by Avenged Sevenfold. I knew it was out of my range, but my voice was warmed up, so just for fun I did some takes of the verse and chorus vocal parts (the non-screaming sections, though it would be cool if I could pull those off). The results were... inconsistent at best. I did go through and do some broad pitch correction afterwards just to see if that would make much of a difference in the quality of the vocals. Perhaps if I had a software like Melodyne I would see a bit more apparent changes in the quality of the vocals, but as it is even pitch correction isn't doing a lot of good at fixing the overall tone of my voice. I'm going to keep working on vocals just because I think it is a good skill for me to develop, but I think I might honestly just consider scrapping the requirement that my pre-production recordings have to have my vocals on them to be considered "complete" for the purpose of this challenge. Some Stats
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Week 5: Collaborate and Listen3/30/2022 This week I was reminded of the need to embrace the words of a true poet of the late 20th century: Robert Matthew Van Winkle. You may know him better as Vanilla Ice. The first verse of "Ice Ice Baby" asks the listeners to "Stop, collaborate and listen," which is honestly solid advice for ensuring one's success in any kind of creative endeavor. The message of the song gets a bit muddied from there as Ice talks about his brand new invention and how "something takes a hold of [him] tightly," and for some reason that makes him "flow like a harpoon daily and nightly." Regardless, I decided to take some of the lessons at the core of this song to heart, particularly the benefits of collaboration. I'll talk more about the "listening" aspect next week, but for now, I've found that the most productive aspect of my week has come from me taking the time to collaborate and forcing myself to let others read my lyrics, listen to my melodies, and help me see and hear what I couldn't. "Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know" Vanilla Ice This Week's Progress: SongwritingProbably the most progress I made on lyric writing this week came from spending a good hour in the "studio" with my wife and having her look over what I've written so far. I played her the melody idea I had for the chorus to "Dying Light" enough times for the notes to imprint. After that, I just kept playing the chord progression over again until we stumbled upon some lyrical variations that really seem like they're on the right track to capturing the overall theme of the song. As with much of the other progress I've been making with my writing, I don't love what we're working with 100% right now, but I do feel a lot better about the direction the song is going than I did a couple of weeks ago. Of course, the biggest issue is still time and the fact that I can't always seem to find that dedicated hour to brute force myself through the missing pieces of a song. Even still, I have found that since that really productive session that even when I can squeeze in five minutes or so to look at lyrics, I am finding that it is easier to get them drafted than it had been before. This Week's Progress: VocalsI actually did get a chance to sing this week. Granted, it was also in one of those hour-long sessions where I mostly did vocal warm ups and embarrassed myself singing and playing "Thunderstruck," but still. Progress is progress, or so they say. Now, I might have gotten a little overzealous and made it so I needed a couple days to rest my voice afterwards, but it was legitimately exciting despite me definitely not hitting every note I wanted to. I don't know how much of my singing will be featuring on my production drafts of songs, but I do feel at least a little better about the prospect. Some Stats
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Week 4: Don't Bore Us...3/20/2022 One of the most cliché songwriting maxims of all time has been living rent-free in my head this week: "Don't bore us, get to the chorus." There is some truth to this idea, though I find I'm looking at it a bit differently than I have before when approaching music from the songwriter's perspective. First off, it would be nice to get to the chorus. It's the part that everybody is waiting for after all. So it has to be big. The melodies have to be epic and catchy. The lyrics are likely to repeat, so they better be on point. It's a lot of pressure, in other words, and for perhaps that reason and a combination of others, this week has seen me continue to struggle to make what I'd consider to be substantive progress on the music I'm writing. Maybe my problem is I'm writing in tiny little cubicles at coffee houses Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash This Week's Progress: SongwritingAs I mentioned last week, my principal focus has been on generating melodies for the chorus of "Dying Light." I think I like the melody I have at the moment (especially with the added backing harmony), but the lyrics are just eluding me for whatever reason. My goal for this week is to try to whip that section of the song into shape. I think the key will be just allowing myself to write the bad lyrics and be okay with something being there. They say perfect is the enemy of progress, and I need to allow myself to let go of the idea that I'm going to just grab the perfect lyrics from the ether. I'm not sure how this song will turn out at this point, but it won't go anywhere if I don't write something down. This Week's Progress: VocalsNot much to report here, unfortunately. In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try and squeeze in time to practice singing this past week, but it just didn't happen. Singing is an interesting beast for me because unlike the guitar where I feel my relative experience level makes it easier to practice purposefully even with only fifteen minutes or so, I almost feel like with singing I need to give myself at least a half hour or forty-five minutes to accomplish anything productive. Right now, I'm worrying that the song I'm putting the most work into won't be able to have a good vocal recording by the time this project is over because my lack of time to work on singing is probably going to come back and bite me when I'm trying to get a good take of the chorus. I'm not completely without hope despite what my words would imply, but it is a little concerning. Over this next week, I'm recommitting to finding time to work on my vocals. Maybe if I only have fifteen minutes that time will be best spent doing warm-ups and other exercises, but at least that's something. Some Stats
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Week 3: Making Time3/16/2022 This past week of Genius Hour was the first where time, or the lack thereof, began to complicate the forward progress on this project. Progress was made, but not as much as I have seen in previous weeks. This isn't to say that every issue this week was down to struggles with timing, but when it doesn't feel like time is available to make substantial progress, I've found that it's often easy to convince yourself that doing even a little bit is not worth it. By the end of the week, fortunately, I was able to work beyond that hiccup by leaning on the techniques and exercises I have gleaned from my songwriting course to find ways to "hack" myself into inspiration for forward progress on my music. Not that kind of hacking. This Week's Progress: VocalsUnlike last week where I really got into exploring videos on voice exercises and warm-ups, I spent little to no time this week working on vocal exercises. Knowing how good my voice sounds now (read: not good at all), I'm sure that loss of a week will come back to bite me near the end of the project. That being said, I do feel pretty good about what exploring these voice videos has done to help me find my range and use that to guide my melody writing for the songs I'm working on. It's definitely helping me figure out what is feasible and what isn't with my current skill level, so that's something at least. This Week's Progress: SongwritingOn the songwriting front, much of my focus this week was on just giving myself time to do something productive. I probably only really got a combined hour or so of work in on writing itself this week, but there was some forward progress at least. Earlier in the week, I pulled out my guitar and allowed myself to just jam on some variations of a riff that I improvised in Eb Minor incorporating diminished intervals (for those who don't know music theory, these are technically "keyless" and have a tendency to sound dark). I wasn't sure if I liked the part or not, but I wrote it down so I could give myself some distance from it. Surprisingly, it actually still sounded okay when I listened to it a couple of days ago, so I'm thinking I might give myself some time next week to revisit it and experiment with some backing percussion and other variations that could be turned into parts for a song. My biggest struggle with songwriting so far has been with the song I'm tentatively calling "Dying Light" I referenced in my last post. The aspect of this particular song that is giving me the most trouble is the chorus. The chord progression for this part of the song is one that I like quite a bit despite its relative simplicity, but the vocal melody that should go over it has continued to elude me. Fortunately, this week saw a bit of progress in that area. Using some tips from my songwriting course, I decided to change the way I was approaching the vocal melody to give it a different context. Instead of focusing first on the rhythm and lyrics as I have done with the verse, I pulled out my guitar and created a melody line using different intervals from the chords in the progression. I haven't lived with it long enough to know if this will work, but I'm definitely more excited about writing lyrics around these notes than I was about the ideas I had come up with before. Some DataLyrics Written
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Week 2: Warming Up My Voice3/9/2022 The principal goal of this Genius Hour project is to take the songs that I have been working on sporadically for the past fourteen years and try to finish them. So why has it taken so long for me to actually get songs to the finish line? Simply enough, it's the vocals. Despite being an English teacher and reading quite a bit, I've never spent a lot of time writing lyrics for songs. And even if I did, it really has never mattered much to me because I always knew I couldn't sing anyway, so why bother? Well, with this project, the idea is to change that narrative and actually give myself the means to write interesting vocal parts. I can't guarantee I'll be able to sing everything I write, but if I can at least start the process of improving my singing voice, that should theoretically make it easier to communicate my ideas to someone who is more skilled than me. Pictured: Someone who actually knows what they're doing. This Week's Progress: VocalsEarlier in the week, I went online and researched places to take voice lessons in the area. I stumbled upon Triad Music Academy, which offers bundles of four lessons at a time for $160. That's not the worst deal I've heard considering the benefits of having one-on-one time with a teacher who can cater instruction directly to you, but I'm also not sure that this would be money well spent just yet. In the meantime, I've turned my attention to more of the high quality free resources I've been able to find on YouTube, which has led me to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, which is an amazing repository of voice lessons. So far, I have only gone through his video called "Learn How to Sing For Guys" (embedded below), but it has given me some really good information on improving my posture, breath control, and finding ways to hit notes within a specific key. He has some other videos on subjects like daily vocal exercises and how to properly warm up your voice that I am planning on consulting this week. This Week's Progress: SongwritingCompared to the first week of the project, I haven't had as much progress regarding new songwriting, but since last week's post focused on the background for the project, I am going to take some time now to talk about what I did both before the project and in the first week to help streamline my creative process during these twelve weeks. Before the project started, I went through all the song files on my computer and listened to every one. Some of these were pieces of recorded riffs, and others were more written out pieces of music I've accumulated for years. Each piece of music was rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 5 being a piece of music that I considered either to have a lot of potential or one that gave me a raw smiling or headbanging kind of reaction. During the first week of the project, I took one of these pieces that was the closest to being a real song and forced myself to sit down and write some lyrics for it and record its guitar solo. Before the project started, all I had in mind for this song was a rough rhythm for the vocal melody and a working title: "Dying Light." Building off that idea of light dying, I later came up with the lyric "Love born in fire / burns to ashes before my eyes." I still don't know if that lyric is any good or if it is incredibly generic, but building off that idea, I took some advice from my songwriting course and created a word cloud and wrote down as many words I could associate with "fire," "death," and "light." At this point, lyrics for the first verse do exist and I have recorded a rough take of me "singing" those parts to get the overall feel, but hopefully nobody ends up hearing the part that has been sung so far because while it's not terrible for a guide vocal, it is very much not what the final product is supposed to be. With that being said, one area I've been learning to focus on with this project is the idea that all art is substandard at some point in the creative process. There will be many bad parts and cliché lyrics before I can whip my musical ideas into shape, but I have to be okay with that part of the process. Some DataLyrics Written
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Spring 2022: A New Project3/2/2022 You're Doing Another Project? What Is It?My Genius Hour project this semester is to write music, specifically to write and complete pre-production on at least three original songs. "Pre-production" in this case means that the song is completely written (a full arrangement with guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and other layering as necessary) and that there is a recorded version of it that is indicative of how the final product should sound. For this project, I also define a "song" as a piece of music with a clear structure (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) and a "topline" (a vocal melody or a melody created by another melodic instrument). But Why?I have played guitar for fifteen years. I have made various attempts at writing pieces of songs for fourteen years. I have never actually completely finished writing a song in that time. I have a lot of pieces of songs — many that I actually like quite a bit — but nothing that is complete and that could go to a studio or be released. My main obstacle has always been my lack of singing experience, which has made me feel insecure about writing vocal parts and lyrics to go with them. My goal with this project is to work through that limitation and make use of a number of resources available to me to better develop my ideas and actually finish my songs. What's the Process Going to Look Like?Before beginning this project, I purchased a songwriting course called How Songs Are Made by YouTuber and songwriter Trey Xavier. I have worked through a good portion of his content and am planning on first finishing watching the videos in this sixteen-hour course and then going back to revisit each module as I use his suggestions to write new parts for songs or expand upon existing pieces of music I have written. Additionally, I have already gone through my collection of song ideas and ranked each piece on a scale of 1-5 to determine which ones have the most potential. As the twelve weeks begin, I plan to take the highest-rated parts and work to finish each of their instrumental and vocal arrangements. As the project continues, I will also be working on developing my singing ability, not necessarily to be used in the final versions of my recordings, but rather to create a solid guide to give potentially to another singer. I anticipate that as part of this project I may find myself purchasing a midi keyboard and pitch correction hardware, though I am not sure if that will happen yet at this time. What Do You Want Out of This?This project will honestly be successful if I can finish one song and feel confident that it could be worth taking the time to track a real demo and final studio mix. Obviously, getting the three is my goal, but having any complete piece of music will definitely contribute to my overall feeling of success. If I ended up having to trade out doing three songs for having one song that went beyond the pre-production phase and that I recorded "for real," that would be an acceptable substitute.
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