audiot

that is something i do all the time, since i wrote my first song – about 18 years ago that is. accidentally i should add.

for some reason, i always write stuff i cannot play or sing – and it sucks. breathing for instance is usually no big deal once you got the basics down. there’s of course – and always will be – songparts that are hard to do, but those are just a few. oddly enough, i managed to write songs, lots of them, that i myself could not breathe at all. how stupid is that?

and although i’m through with this “airless phase”, i still do this with other parts – like drum- or guitarpieces i simply can not play. now, today that shouldn’t be a problem, right? we have computers and such to do this for us. but this is just not how it works, at least for me. even though i do almost everything with the laptop, i still take pride in my music (stop mocking me!) and the things you hear are really played and recorded, not drawn in with some pencil tool. and this is important to give it authenticity, which is one of the most vital things in music – or any art, for that matter. so right now, while working on the second album, i spend a whole lot of time practicing – just to be able to actually play those things i’m making up for myself. it usually is about precision. when i come up with a drumpart, it’s something i am basically able to play – if you can think it, you can play it – so that’s not the problem. same with guitar or bass. the hard part is to play it clean and precisely, to make every hit or stroke count and equally important. to have no fingernoises or rimclicks and so forth. this is the big challenge for me, so it’s writing the stuff and then tracking a really bad version of it, so i can figure it out in detail. and once i know exactly what to play, i practice like crazy to simply not suck too bad on the real track.

and that’s my point. there’s this saying here (no idea if there’s something similar in english…): one grows with his challenges. or as i probably mentioned many times before: practice something you can NOT do, instead of playing something you already own over and over again. so maybe i should feel lucky to have such a freakingly perverted subconscious that throws all those rocks at me during songwriting, because it knows me all too well. but even if this makes me playing better, it still would be nice to come up with something i could do right away every once in a while…

sorry, folks – but i’m in a ranting mood right now.

this is one of those days i regret it a little to do everything on my own, when it comes to recording, songwriting etc.

don’t get me wrong, this is the best freaking thing in the world and i’ve had very good reasons to make this decision. one of them being people who just talk and talk and never get something done. i remember this guitarplayer who wanted to record a few takes at home, taking the daw (digital audio workstation) with him – so nobody else could record anything. he kept talking about how this will be happening, how cool this is and so forth and that we shouldn’t do rehearsals for the time being because it’s best to fully concentrate on the recording. after six months (!) i asked him about some status-report an the answer was “i’m still working on the right sound” – he hadn’t recorded a single note. that’s when i decided to do things on my own. and regarding the creative process (including recording, mixing etc.) i’m happy with this, never had any second thoughts – i love it!

what i don’t love is the whole statistics stuff. there are dozens if not hundreds of sites you need to be on, there are lots and lots of tools you need to use, things you need to do – this never ends and eats up tremendous amounts of time.

i just found out yesterday, that “bankjob” the first song on “corner” (you know, the blue player, top of sidebar…) currently is no.16 of the ReverbNation rock charts for germany (hmm, since i upgraded to wordpress 2.8, some features are missing – including links for instance…). and that’s awesome! on the other hand, obtaining this tiny piece of information took longer than actually writing the song. and i haven’t even got to the whole social-networking-thing yet. that’s where a band has a huge advantage – you can pick one guy who does this, probably the one least involved in recording or songwriting activities. a whole band can certainly be much more efficient than a single person, but let’s not forget, most bands aren’t. there’s still one guy who basically does it all – which again is good for lone warriors like me…

anyway, i just wanted to write a little frustration off my chest regarding that neverending statistics war- ugh. now i’m getting back to work on “traitor” – time to do something of substance…