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. |