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The Results  [ Edit ] 

Here it is, the month is over. Alas, I haven’t finished a damn thing.

Let me explain.

First, I did actually produce a fair bit of raw material. I have a whole bunch of pieces of electronic pieces (i.e. loops, apparently the very easiest thing to produce), lyrics to one full song and two half songs (I say half because they don’t seem finished), a four or five minute drumset duet, and a two minute piece of chillout electronica that’s slightly more than just a couple loops.

So it wasn’t a total bust. But it was certainly far short of the ambitious goal I set.

The problem is pretty simple: at this stage in my musical life, I’m still an accompanist. That’s what I’m good at, and it’s what I like to do. I know how to write parts, not how to write songs. One of the goals of this project was to find out how difficult it is to write songs. It’s sometimes easy to forget that songwriting isn’t easy. There’s a lot of shlocky crap out there. But, for a little while at least, I’ll refrain from talking about all that crap out there. I wasn’t even able to finish one stupid song.

The good news is that, while I didn’t finish anything of my own, I’m making progress on the sideman front. I recorded a four song demo with one group (mp3s will be available soon), and am in rehearsals for a new recording next month. I’ve been to a few sessions, have gotten good feedback, and I think I’m generally playing fairly well these days.

I’ve had to catch up on other work too, which made for an easy excuse not to write music. That’s really what it comes down to: songwriting is not terribly fun for me. The prospect of doing it always filled me with a little bit of excitement, and a lot of dread.

So now I’m going to slow down on the composition. I’ll keep my guitar handy, but I’m going to concentrate my current efforts on learning about recording, learning how to program drums, learning about effects, and the other things that are of immediate use to me, and that I find interesting and fun. I know I have some songs in me, but I’m not going to forcibly squeeze them out like so much old toothpaste. If I need to write, I’ll write. If I don’t, I won’t. Writing for this site continues to be enjoyable, so I’m going to continue to do that, and more regularly (I hope).

Of course, none of this changes the fact that I’m envious my wonderful wife actually met her goal for the month. So get over there and read it!