1st Quarter Update

An unexpected side effect of plugging away at the Redline Project is having a pointed awareness of just how speedily a set of months can slip away. Tonight is March 31st, relegating the first three months of 2010 to the past and leaving only nine in the future.

Does this shock anyone else? We just sipped champagne and exploded poppers roughly 14 days ago. How can March 2010 be hours from vanishing?

As my custom has become at the close of each month, I am taking the opportunity to scrutinize the successes and failures of the Redline Project. Where has there been progress? Where has the momentum slacked a bit? What needs to happen to keep this initiative moving forward? Are we on track for an album release on October 31?

Let's commence with the plusses. In three months, I have acquired more than enough gear to adequately record, edit, and publish an album. Many of the acquisitions (including an electric guitar, microphones, and studio monitors) are borrowed instead of purchased, which is the only way I have managed to stay within a budget of $1,000.

Speaking of budget, I am thrilled to announce that while I have spent far less than $1,000 on the Redline Project ($877 to be exact), I have sold $900 worth of bikes and related gear to offset the cost. This has required a sizable and complicated effort. If anyone has ever tried auctioning items under Ebay's asinine new user feedback policies, you know that sellers have no recourse to deal with feisty, manipulative, or deadbeat buyers.

As I write this blog post, I received an email from one such buyer who is demanding more money back from me than he ever payed for an item sold 'as is.' Lovely. Ebay is wonderful, and Ebay sucks eggs. If someone with the username jmdesigns2 tries to buy an item from you, run far and run fast.

Frustrations considered, piecing together a basic recording studio for zero dollars is a grand success, and one that pleases my wife as well.

This month, I wrote what I consider to be my best songs so far. The tally so far is nine, including vocal and instrumental numbers. Several pieces are five minutes in length, and some are longer. Mind you, these are not final recorded versions; the tracks are currently scratch recordings meant to capture the basic form and textures of each composition.

With a baby boy coming to join our family around the first of July, I have decided that the Redline Project's final product will feature 10 original pieces of music. Originally I was aiming for 12, but I needed to adjust in order to keep the project moving forward as I prepare for fatherhood.

After the scratch recording roadmaps are all pieced together, the next step is to scrap and re-record just about everything. Three or four months worth of knowledge is virtually nothing when compared to giants of the recording industry with decades of experience lining their pockets. Om short, I am a noob. That said, I know considerably more than I did 83 posts ago, and I am hoping this base of knowledge will lend a relatively clean and polished sound to the final cuts.

Is the Redline Project on schedule? The answer, according to the original array of deadlines, is a resounding yes. I am supposed to complete all the rough cuts by May 15, which is still a month and a half out. If I Complete one more composition and two more recordings by then, I can draw a red line (pun intended) through this mile marker.

Nevertheless, I feel hopelessly behind. After the scratch tracks are complete, I must get to work recording palatable music that is at least somewhat iPod-worthy. Then comes the mixing process, with the mastering procedures hot on the tail. If these daunting tasks somehow are accomplished by October 31, I then must climb the mountain of distribution. At a glance, this final step is made easier by offering the music free of charge to anyone and everyone, but that in turn complicates the matter as it begs questions of copyright issues and distribution venues.

[Insert panicked nail biting here]

Scores of miles fade into the rearview mirror as hundreds more appear on the horizon. As this project turns into something of a second full-time job, the television tempts me with endless chasm mind-numbing nothingness. But I will press on. I will create. I will get heard.

Not Going to Believe This

Tuesday night is scheduled for open shop at Communicycle, the bicycle co-op I helped to establish. We have been meeting with the youth for some basketball while the Communicycle volunteers scramble to get the shop back in order after a recent robbery. Ian, one of the program's leaders, has been striking up conversations in past weeks with Edgar, a middle school student who among other hobbies is training as a boxer.

Ian has a deep love for music, and he was thrilled to discover that Edgar and a few of his buddies have a talent with rapping. The group approached me tonight at Ian's urging, looking for some original beats to which they could find a flow.

A quick (and perhaps stunning) admission: I have always loved the sound of rap, though I know nothing about it whatsoever. But hey... the Redline Project is composed almost exclusively of project tasks that are completely outside of my knowledge base; who am I to turn down a unique opportunity to collaborate with Edgar, Ian, and others from the Chamblee area?

So here it is, in all its glory, with all its faults. my first loop ever intended to be used in rap music. Does it make anyone besides me want to dance?

Thursday

Progress on the latest song has been moving along at a crawl, though I finally have something presentable to show. The verses are a bit naked as they wait for their chorus to be written, but I am going to post the mostly baked, still doughy lyrics here in the name of process.

This song has a working title of Thursday, alluding to the jarring observance of Holy Week that is once again in our midst. The phrases are not meant to become preachy or even to have any sort of message or motive. Instead, I have tried to deal with the confounding emotions present in this bewildering progression of holidays.

Loose ideas are jotted into a Microsoft Word document for the chorus, though I am only halfway satisfied with the outcome. Here is the song in progress:

Thursday

Clock says three; I can barely breathe
Words a knife; pierce me in my sleep
Broken loaf; drunk on heavy wine
Trembling fist; dipped his bread with mine

The rain must fall
Inside the garden wall

Weeping lead; sweating drops of blood
Wielding peace, fear I caused a flood
Decades fade; time has gone so fast
Tangled in fishing nets I’ve cast

The rain must fall
Inside the garden wall

Fall on my double-edged sword
Pay the price only I afford
Muscles seize; fingers start to writhe
Almost dead; barely still alive

The rain must fall
Inside the garden wall

Song Ideas

Yesterday I described the backwards process through which I am writing my latest song. Though I have composed an entire song form (melody, harmony, chord structure, and instrumentation), I am lacking lyrics. Only two lines are filled in thus far:

Clock reads three; I can barely breathe.
Words a knife; pierce me in my sleep.

How may a song flow from this concept? Is this a tale autobiographically describing any instance of sleepless, stressful nights? Do these words describe my struggle with fear? With failure? With feelings of inadequacy?

Maybe these lines are not about me at all. Perhaps they are about a buddy of mine who wonders if anyone likes him. If anyone wants to be his friend. Or is it about a youth in the Communicycle program whose dad has departed the house leaving a mother to care for three children?

What if the lines begin to describe the horror of betrayal on Maundy Thursday leading to the death of Friday?

I am slowly realizing the value of a generic lyric - one that can be bent and flexed to mean any number of things in the mind of the listener. As details fill the gaps of a story, the number of listeners able to internalize it will undoubtedly decrease.

Bit Backwards

I have romantic notions about how a song comes into existence. Perhaps the composer draws from the simplicity of childhood, the pain of the teenage years, the angst of a friend, the joy of a monumental success. Picking up a guitar, words flow out of her like warm honey and spill onto the page of a parchment journal. A melody descends from the sky, cloaking the meaningful stanzas in simple elegance. A song is born; divine.

My developing process of songwriting has absolutely nothing in common with this hypothetical approach. I trend toward a backwards approach, commencing with a musical idea or texture, humming a melody, and then frantically searching for halfway-meaningful words to accompany the musical environment.

Yesterday, I jaunted down the same old songwriting path with a bit of a twist. After laying down some sonic concepts and singing through a handful of potential melodies, my mind conjured exactly two lines of a verse; nothing more, nothing less.

Here they are:
Clock reads three; I can barely breathe.
Words a knife; pierce me in my sleep.

That's it... the whole banana. A confession: I already love this song. There is melody, harmony, chordal structure, and an array of musical ideas piled into my head and stacked onto tracks in Logic. The music even echoed off the shower walls as I wailed into the shampoo microphone this morning.

None of this is negative, except that a concept for the song's direction would be a pleasant development. If I am going to reverse-engineer a complete song from this tiny seed, some concept formulation is needed first. Look for the development of this idea tomorrow - same time, same channel.

Pile of Goodies

My buddy David loaded me up with an arsenal of cast-off equipment from his home studio. I rummaged through the red and white filing box to find microphones, cables, a simple USB recording interface, and (drumroll please...) a set of M-Audio Studiophile studio monitors. Every item on loan is useful, but I am especially delighted to have speakers through which I can playback and edit music. Until now I have been trapped inside a pair of Sennheiser earphones. Thanks David for the loan.

I spent the evening at David's house shooting the breeze and creating some midi loops. He asked about Redline Project's progress, specifically inquiring if I am paring the possibilities down and defining my sound.

Good question - pretty sure the answer is a resounding no. Short of the fact that I am enamored with delay effects, I seem to pull from an array of genres, instrumentation, textures, and rhythms as I compose the individual tracks for this project. The ability to chameleon through the sonic range has its merits, but my inability to settle into a defined sound reveals a whiff of musical immaturity.

As I slowly press towards the goal of the Redline Project album release, I must remind myself of its purposes. I am here to explore, to ideate, to loosen the chains and let the music out. As the recording is released and downloaded, I anxiously await listeners' opinions. Will the tracks have overarching coherence? Will the eclectic nature of each piece lend a pleasing mosaic effect? Or will the lack of homogeny jar the consumer's ear and land the audio files in the digital trash heap?

Paradox

Do you remember when questions had one answer? Every aspect of my life was marked by right or wrong until the day I graduated college. Remember when red checkmarks peppered the pages of stapled exams? Remember bubble sheets and percentiles? Remember when two and two equaled four?

I believe good and evil war with each other. Though this is an abrasive fact of life, I am resigned to know nothing can change this reality.

Complexity is a web of sticky strands that spins thicker each day, and nothing is ever quite as it appears. On occasion, the underbelly of evil and the essence of good both cameo in the same scene, leaving spectators in a confounded haze.

By way of example, I heard a story about a young lady who was raped in an alley. In the aftermath, scars of fear permanently gnarled the woman's soul, leaving her emotionally paralyzed and unable to leave the apartment. The baby she bore as a result of the horrific incident is her greatest source of hope. Though she would never choose to relive the panic of the rape, she can not fathom life without her precious daughter.

I inked up a sheet of my sketch book in search of a song that deals with instances of this paradox. Though I am yet to find adequate words, the ideas are converging into a string of questions for which there are no answers. I can not wait to sing this song; hopefully it will take shape soon.