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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Weeks 4-6: An Overdue Update3/31/2020
So, it's been a hot minute since my last blog post. Typically, I'm much more consistent with my updating schedule, but quite a bit has changed in the past few weeks. I have spent an inordinate amount of time transitioning over to online learning for my students, a process which has been both surprisingly easy and exceedingly difficult depending on what aspect we're talking about.
Much like my students, my Genius Hour project has shifted a bit as a result of the current pandemic, though not for the same reasons as many others have had to change theirs. For a lot of my students, their projects either involved working with a group or doing something that involved having more social interaction than what has been allowed by our current restrictions. My project didn't really ever have those requirements -- I was always going to be spending most of my time working on my own in my "studio." And while I've continued to do that, my work over these past three weeks has expanded beyond what I originally envisioned when I proposed this project in February. Successes and Struggles
I want to begin this section by noting that despite not blogging for longer than intended, I have found that these three weeks have been some of the most prolific of my project so far, and they have undeniably seen the most unforeseen developments. To make this section a bit easier to navigate, I'm going to subdivide it by the three songs that I spent the most time working on over each of these three weeks.
SONG 1: "SAD BUT TRUE" BY METALLICA When we last spoke, I had completed most of the recording of what I still anticipate to be the most difficult song on my schedule: Metallica's "Sad But True." This song was placed first on my schedule because I knew that I wanted to challenge myself with learning to play the song's drum part. My assumption was that this would be the hardest part of the entire recording process and that once I got that down doing the guitars would be nothing. It turned out that I was about half right on that thought. The drums were the most challenging part of the process as that's still my weakest instrument, but I love how the drums turned out on the current recording. The rhythm guitar and bass took some practice, but they ultimately only took and afternoon to record. What I didn't anticipate, however, was the challenges of the guitar solo. Just looking at the notes and rhythms in the solo, it's not terribly difficult to play if you're going to do so in a live setting where a certain degree of "mistakes' are expected. But tracking a solo perfectly in time for a recording? That is a lot more challenging for a solo you don't really know that well. As such, I ended up having to spend a full week and a half just working on nailing that solo, which definitely threw me off my pace. Of course, then COVID-19 hit and I found myself initially with a surprising bit of free time, so I was able to devote that amount of time to working on the solo without having to worry overmuch about other work obligations. So while it took me a bit to get it all figured out, at least I didn't have to break up the week and a half of practice over three or four different weeks. So, all that to say that I now have a full instrumental recording of a Metallica song. I know that you guys probably want to hear said cover, but I'm not prepared to put it on a specific platform for streaming just yet (I still have to figure out how to do that without infringing on copyright), but once I have those logistics worked out, I will place a link on here for you guys to sample my recording and check on my progress.
SONG 2: "WATCH OVER YOU" BY ALTER BRIDGE
The second song on my list is one of my favorites by this band and was an intentional departure from the heaviness of Metallica. That's not to say that this band isn't quite heavy at times, but my goal was to find a song that was simple enough to learn quickly but that still sounded cool. Also, it was a great opportunity to try my hand at recording some vocals. Now, I don't sing well at all. I could possibly lay down a guide vocal for a track just for the sake of gauging volume and room placement, but nobody would ever pay to hear me sing. My wife, however, has quite a nice voice, and we've jammed on this song before for fun. So, that was the master plan: learn the instrumental parts for this song (a bit challenging for the timing on the drums but otherwise doable), and then have my wife lay down the vocal. The good news is that the instrumental for this track is recorded and sounds pretty solid at the moment. It has some imperfections, but it works for the most part. The problem, however, is the vocal tracks we have at the moment. I want to specify before I go any further that in no way should my frustrations at the vocals be seen as an indictment of my wife. With that being said, the vocal recording has been difficult so far because of my lack of good equipment for recording vocals. We have a microphone that works decently well for jamming in the "studio," but because it is a cheaper mic and we don't currently have any kind of stand for it, any sudden movements can cause a lot of unintended feedback. Also, because the Apogee Jam Plus that I am currently using for recording doesn't interface well with this microphone, I have to use a particularly convoluted setup to get the microphone to even be "heard" by my recording software. None of this bodes particularly well for capturing a recording that truly demonstrates the quality of the live vocal, which is a problem I'm going to have to work on over the next few weeks to see if I can solve. So, the current status on this track is that it is mostly finished, but not at the level currently where I'd want to post anything other than the instrumental demo. Again, since it is a cover, I'm not sure of the best way to go about publishing the recording for you guys to hear. Once I figure that out, however, I will make sure to update you.
SONG 3: "WE HAVE NO STANDARDS" BY MATTHEW BARKER
This is the part of the post where I finally get to the coolest update: I recorded another original song! The story behind this one is a bit convoluted, but I'll go ahead and give you a quick rundown of how this one came to be. As part of the many changes that have resulted from COVID-19, another teacher, Collin Ferebee, and I have started working together to create a podcast for our students called "We Have No Standards." This podcast was created to keep ourselves engaged with our students since we have been unable to physically interact with them as a result of the school closures. We have released three episodes thus far and have had a great time both filming them and seeing the responses from our small audience. One thing we realized when we were producing the first episode, though, was that we were going to want some music to use for our intros and outros. We found some copyright-free outro music relatively easily, but the intro was a bit more challenging. We wanted the music to represent aspects of our personality, and so Ferebee decided to find something that was a little bit "metal." We found something that sounded pretty cool, but it wasn't free of copyright and was going to cost money for us to use. Being slightly frustrated by the roadblocks we were hitting but also inspired by the general vibe of the songs we were hearing, I decided to go downstairs and start improvising guitar riffs. About 45 minutes later, I had a full instrumental demo recorded. Of the three recordings mentioned in this post, this is currently the only one that I have put on the internet. Since it is my original piece of music, I figured that there wouldn't be any issues with me posting it on my newly created Bandcamp profile. I've also embedded the song below in case you'd like to check it out.
âOverall, I'm relatively happy with what I was able to produce in a short amount of time. Since that initial writing/recording session, I have gone back through the song and played around with the mixing of each instrument to make the version you can currently hear on my profile and on the podcast. I do plan, however, on doing a few other versions of this track because I know that it can be better. I still no very little about mixing and mastering music, and beyond that I know that the tones I captured for both the drums and the guitars on this track are not the exact sounds I was going for, but I do believe that the more I learn about sound design and the crafting of guitar tones, the better I'll be able to record and preserve the kinds of sounds that I know I can produce in a live setting.
I know that the world of recording music is quite complex, but I am confident that the more music I produce, the better I will get at troubleshooting my issues and mitigating some of the issues that are currently popping up on my tracks. The Schedule
I don't want to go into too much detail here as I've already stretched this post far beyond what I would write normally. As usual, though, I do want to give an overview of my progress in this project so I can keep myself accountable for the work I still have left to complete.
âRecorded So Far
This Week's Recording Tasks
Songs To Be Learned/Rehearsed
This post marks the official halfway point for Genius Hour, and looking at my schedule I still feel confident that I will be able to reach some version of my original goals. Of course, if the last three weeks have taught me nothing else, it's that I can't assume anything about anything going on in the world right now. Having said that, it's nice to know that amidst the very real suffering that people are experiencing right now, I still have the opportunity and privilege to make music. Even if it's not in the form that I want it to be now, it still exists and is part of the world. That's not something I've ever really been able to say until this point, and it's honestly pretty awesome. See you next week!
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What a complicated world we're living in now. It would be trite and repetitive to say that I've never seen anything like what has been happening over the past few weeks with the coronavirus situation, but I can't help but marvel at how much the world has been impacted by this pandemic. In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm living in the first act of a movie. I hope I'm not because that would imply that things will only get worse from here, which I guess they will do so inevitably, but hopefully not to that Hollywood degree.
Perhaps I'm being over-dramatic. It wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of that. Then again, a part of me also feels like I'm not worried enough. I still went out and got sushi with my wife on Saturday. I've been taking advantage of the confusion regarding my expectations as a teacher to relax a bit more and play my guitar in between spurts of grading. I guess it just feels like we've just been walking on pins and needles for the past week that it's hard to process what happens now with the confirmation of school closings. It's probably no surprise that music has been on my mind a lot recently. Playing the guitar has always been a comfort for me when I'm feeling wound up and like I don't have any meaningful outlet for my nervous energy. As such, I've found myself doing a lot more with music this past week, and I imagine that trend will continue as we navigate this unfamiliar territory. For all the confusion that we're dealing with at the moment, it's encouraging to know that my music isn't going away anytime soon. Successes and Struggles
Through both a combination of falling behind on my original schedule and trying to distract myself from everything going on, I found myself playing a lot of guitar during this past week. I practiced the two guitar solos on "Sad But True" as much as I could and have finally gotten it to a level that I felt comfortable recording. There are still a couple of lead tracks I want to lay down before releasing that recording on here, but I'm feeling pretty good with it overall.
I have some other opinions on its overall sound that I'd like to talk about in more detail, but without the actual tracks for reference I feel they will fall on deaf ears. As a sort of preview for my next post, I will say that while I am enjoying the recording process, capturing the kind of tone I want from my guitar has proven to be much more of a challenge than anticipated. I'm not sure exactly how to best go about addressing this right now and might have to even take a week off from my original schedule if I want to really dive into the minutiae of my sound. I'll have to determine if that is time worth investing as I wrap up this long-promised recording and start working on my next track: "Watch Over You" by Alter Bridge. The Schedule
The plan as it stands is to keep on my original schedule and work on tracking the various parts of "Watch Over You" this coming week. I will finish up the lead parts on "Sad But True" before getting into all this, but I feel optimistic that I can get this done with relative ease as I'm much more comfortable with the various instruments on this next song than I was with Metallica.
I haven't practiced or learned the drum part for the Alter Bridge track, though they don't sound like they will be as challenging as "Sad But True" was for me. We'll see how it all shakes out as I work on these individual pieces over the next few days. Recorded So Far
This Week's Recording Tasks
Songs To Be Learned/Rehearsed
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The second official week of Genius Hour comes to a close and already I'm starting to fall behind. Last week, I mentioned that my plan was to get a full recording of Metallica's "Sad But True" down so I could post it on here. Alas, I'm not quite there with that track, but I'll still plan on posting the little three-track recording I currently have a little bit later in the week.
So, do I feel like I'm already failing at this project or am so far off the pace that I won't be able to recover? Definitely not, but this week has definitely reinforced in me the importance of keeping myself under a bit of pressure to ensure that I don't get myself any farther off track. Successes & Struggles
Probably the greatest success I experienced this week was actually managing to get a workable recording of a drum part for "Sad But True." With the drums being my weakest instrument by far, I've spent most of the past two and a half weeks learning the various fills in the song knowing that I would be recording that part this week. My goal was to get a clean recording in as few takes as possible. This turned out to be somewhat challenging, and I definitely have some missing hits on the current take, but I'm still generally pleased with how it turned out.
Of course, since I spent most of my time this past week working on only the drum part of the song, I didn't leave myself with much time to practice my other instruments. Fortunately, I've listened to Metallica (and this song in particular) for over a decade, so learning the rhythm guitar and bass parts wasn't particularly challenging. I was able to bang out a track for both of these instruments in one take, something that felt quite rewarding after spending a seemingly inordinate amount of time trying to get the basic of the drum part down. What really makes "Sad But True" sound so cool to me, though, is all the cool harmonies and lead guitar parts that are interspersed throughout the track's runtime. I've looked at these parts and practiced them some in the past couple of days, but while they're not incredibly difficult, they're just challenging enough that I haven't felt comfortable enough to try recording them at this point. I imagine that since this week is a planned rehearsal week for the next recording, I can still allocate a few more days to knocking out the rest of this track and not fall too far off my overall pace. So, that's the plan at the moment: keep on keeping on with "Sad But True" and hope that I get a good initial recording by Wednesday or so. The Schedule
I'm going to use this section of my posts each week to keep track of where I am on my original pace and note where I'm making adjustments.
Recorded So Far
This Week's Recording Tasks
Songs To Be Learned/Rehearsed
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With a new semester comes yet another opportunity for me to participate in my favorite project for all my classes: Genius Hour. Genius Hour is a twelve-week-long project that asks students to set a goal and work to achieve it. For the first few years I assigned this project, I mostly watched from afar as my students participated in all of these cool activities and set such awesome goals for themselves. Starting last year, however, I decided to start doing the project as well, leading me to even write a good portion of a currently unfinished novel.
This year, I decided to keep the tradition alive and do a project, though I felt it was better to play more to my strengths this time around. In this case, that strength was music, specifically writing music and doing something I've always wanted: record original music. Last semester, I set the goal to figure out how to record music on my own and was able to produce an original song that is currently called "Canned Food Riff," (more on that name another time). I like the song quite a bit for a first foray into recording, and that has inspired me to continue the process this semester, hoping that in doing so I will make my recordings even higher quality and learn how to produce something that is "studio quality" without having to break the bank.
Ah, what a nice set-up. I can't afford it, but how nice.
The Process
I plan on speaking more about my process for specific songs and what I'm hoping to achieve with each one in the weeks that I'm working on them. For now, I'll talk a bit about what will happen each week. Since I'm working on roughly six songs during this project, I will dedicate about two weeks to each one. The first week will be devoted to me learning how to play the song on various instruments. I have intentionally picked songs that aren't too challenging for me on the guitar so I can focus on my weakest instrument: drums.
I plan on getting access to and programming some virtual instruments throughout this project -- and I will have to figure that process out to get the extra sounds I need for at least two of the songs I'm working on -- but I also want to improve my drumming while doing these recordings. I may have to experiment with adding in drum samples at some point just to get the tones I can't capture with my current kit, but until that time I will be hopefully improving my playing along the way. The Schedule
As a way of keeping myself accountable for my work on this project, I want to go ahead and post my tentative schedule for the songs that I'll be recording over the next twelve weeks.
Ultimately, as long as I learn how to use my recording equipment better and can create higher quality audio than I would when working in complete ignorance, I will feel as if I've accomplished my goal. The songs can change throughout the project as long as I improve my skills and create tracks with variety. Next week, I'll talk more specifically about working on the first song, "Sad But True." If all stays on schedule, I should have my first recording done by then. We'll see how that goes. |