As I wend my way through life things of great obviousment begin to emerge. Portents of doom encroach on my consciousness creating much flailings of futility. Awareness is the end of innocence. Aging is slow stupidity. As we shed our delusions through growth the question arises: wtf is the point?
Life is school for the soul. The point of it all is learning stuff. To what end I have no idea, but it seems that’s all we’re here for. Or at least, that’s the only point to being concious. Becoming unconcious and ignoring everything is the path to creating a world we can live with, but stops the learning curve. If we submit our conciousness to the hive it’s so much easier to achieve utopic bliss. No questions arise that cause our beautific smiles to falter.
I figure following the flock is the reason much of the population has become unconscious. It’s just easier. There’s little point to poking the narcoleptic bubble of assimilation with thought. Turn off introspection and conciousness and wait for something.
We got this. Your destiny is set, relax. Sunsets and kittens will be provided, calm the fuck down.
Most of us just slip serenely into bitterness and misplaced anger, then erect a facade of rigid enforced happiness and wait.
You can spot the ones who’ve stopped learning and are just waiting by just looking at them. There’s nothing there.
So… you have something to say because you’re not dead and didn’t turn off concious thought while waiting. You create music to express and dispell the emotional pressure that builds through awareness.
So… one might ask oneself, what does this have to do with recording? Well shut up and I’ll tell you.
Unconsciousness is the bitter enemy of creation.
During the creation of a song you strive to say what you’re thinking with lyrics, and how you feel about it with music. Lyrics are place, music is emotion. A song is a way for others to see your soul. The real you. You need to be fully concious to create emotion.
Some songs fall down because we try to create what we perceive others want to hear. That’s often because we’re afraid to show our true selves. I don’t mean afraid we’re too emotional or weird, but because we might be just boring or not good enough. We do this unconsciously. We just bang out the chords and put the lyrics into a tired melody. Safety. We could do it in our sleep. Half awake for the little inspiration then nap time for the rest.
I have no idea if this is sage advice or just the theoretical ramblings of a failed musician, but I don’t give a flying fugue.
There are steps to creation and it’s freaking hard to have them all express the intuition and inspiration. Something is always not how you envisioned it. When everything from melody to arrangement to recording matches the inspiration you have a song people like.
Writing music is capturing inspiration or emotion and laying it down. When an idea hits try to form it fully in your mind first. Do it quick before it fades. Then track it out to your phone or whatever. Next write down the references that inspired it. Try to keep the original inspiration clear in your mind for the rest of the process.
The reason you might do things this way is because a clear focus of expression throughout the process of writing and recording helps you with all the myriad decisions you’ll be making from writing to recording. Most of these decisions are no brainers and easy. Some will stop you dead in your tracks for a bit, some will kill the song.
The next tricky part is sticking to it through the recording. For instance, the guitar sound isn’t what you were hoping for but you figure it’s close enough. Be prepared to turf days of work if it’s not grabbing you. Sometimes you’re halfway through and another players comes up with an idea that fits perfect. Be prepared to explore it. This is often where a producer can save you money.
If the vision is clear and complete you can easily make quick decisions. If it’s not you can fall into the trap of searching for missing pieces, or flap around in self doubt.
If you do everything yourself you will find weak areas like programming drums or playing bass like a guitar etc. And of course if you get buddies in to help their contribution may not fit the vision. Ask for advice, but ignore whatever doesn’t fit with your clear vision.
I have an audio engineer/producer buddy who’s opinion I trust. We ship tunes back and forth in various stages of completion, then we rip on each other. It helps to have a second set of ears.
As mentioned before, writing and recording is a labor of details. Every detail you take care of is another step to a clear expression of yourself. All the above is a fraction of the details to think about. Be fussy on details and beware of “close enough” or “fix it in the mix”.
Turning an inspiration into a completed song can be a delicate process. If you’re concious for most of it you might in turn wake others up.