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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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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