Tuesday, March 5, 2013

A story about a long-awaited song


My age-long struggle of writing songs may have come to an end. Which is a big deal as it has always been what I want to do with my life. It may still be too early to talk too much about this but I do feel like some things are changing.

On 20th of January, I sat down in front of my computer and opened Cubase as I always do. I was chatting with a friend on Skype and recording 8 bar sections over a drum pattern. Suddenly, maybe for the first time after so many years, I managed to foresee a song from the section I had in my hands. So i decided to take up with it.

The rest came pretty quickly. However my old tendencies of trying to control every moment and achieve "perfection" in first try was constantly trying to stop me to progress. I decided to make this a "bad" song. Not to work on it too much. I didn't even try to re-record sections I failed to play properly. I didn't try to record multiple takes for the solos. I just recorded one of each and put in the song. Neither did I try to find a good sound... nothing... the result is absolute mediocrity if you'd ask me. 

Still, for some reason, the song sounds appealing to me. I do listen to is as a song from time to time. From the first day of recording, I was planning to record it properly at the end; after fixing my technique and learning some mixing and mastering. The thing is, it is March 5th today. About 45 days passed since I uploaded the song on Youtube but I still don't feel like I gained the technical abilities to record this song. 

As a related story, I gave the song link to my dad; who has never showed any real interest in my musical aspirations. I don't know why I gave him the link, maybe I was hoping for something different this time or maybe I just wanted to prove my opinion of him right. But to my surprise, he immediately responded and said that he loved the song and he wants to share it on facebook. And, he did; and his friends commented on the song. Needless to say, this was quite unexpected and gratifying.

I want to record the song again and hopefully I will. I realized that I know nothing about how to write drum tracks so I’m working on that. It would be better if was able to work on it every day but I usually don’t... well, fingers have to be crossed... considering how hard it has been for me to even come at this point.

Here is the song on Youtube and Soundcloud









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