It seems as though everything is cyclical. With the end of something comes the beginning of something else. As I finished the last few questions on my final exam, I realized that this quarter has absolutely flown by. Has it really been nearly three months?
Since as long as I can remember, I always wanted to have writing and music in my life. At the end of the day, I never really had anything to show for it other than a few poorly recorded tracks that just sat on my computer. Almost exactly a year ago today, I decided to start working on something cohesive musically. Before then, I had written one acoustic song here, toyed with synth-pop, wrote some brutal, slamming death metal and really couldn’t stick to one project at a time. As of yesterday, my first EP is on iTunes. I’m proud of the work I’ve done and happy that some people like it as much as I do, but something still doesn’t feel right. Something still feels like I haven’t accomplished anything.
Being a year long process, writing this album forced me to push myself in writing but even more in a healthy self criticism. If it wasn’t perfect, I crossed out a line and fixed it with something better. The problem with this is that at the end of the day, my writing style has completely changed from the time I started. Half of the songs on the album seriously feel old and outdated to me already. I listen through the songs and think to myself, “I could do better than this.. I could do something cooler than this.” And as lame as that sounds, it’s just how I feel. I can’t help but think “what demographic does this cover?” In reality, not a very big one, not to mention marketing to that demographic.
When I was younger, I watched an interview with a band, I can’t remember who it was now. The guitarist said, “We can’t keep writing the same record over and over again,”: something that I didn’t really understand until a few years ago. I sit down now and play piano or guitar or something and what comes out is not like anything on Breathe. When I used to play, I’d hear pianos and violins and xylophones among other things playing inside my head accompanying the music. Because of this, that’s how I arranged the instruments on Breathe, but now I just don’t hear that anymore; it’s all ambient synth pads and electronic drums and layered, distorted vocals used more as an instrument than a message.
With the end of one album starts the beginning of another, although this time around I feel like I’m going to take a completely different approach to the writing process. As of right now, I just have a few little melodies playing in my head and voice memos of myself humming a tune recorded at 3 in the morning of before I end up passing out. To some extent, I’m glad that it’s all I’ve got.
As passively excited as I am to start working on the next individual project, I need to focus on one at a time. A few months ago, my friend Steven and I decided to start up an experimental sort of indie project together that we’ve since titled “Ingest the Cassette.” What started out as us just doing a conjoined acoustic-alternative project has turned into a more ambient, electronic sound (or at least that’s how it sounds in our heads). The problem with this is that we never just sit down and work on it making it really difficult to get anything done. I want to not necessarily kick the project into high gear (because the more you push something, the more resistant your mind is to working), but begin focusing on it rather than my own projects. Steven has just finished his acoustic-alternative album “Shades”, but is still cranking out the last few things in his metal album as well. Maybe once he finishes that, we can both begin to work together and make this project happen.
So as of now, I hit the reset button. Time to work on something new.
