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.
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well, after having done more then 200 transactions with ebay i have to say that most of my ebaypartners have been fair. but there are always some "black sheeps"...
ReplyDeletekeep it on, josh, can't wait to hear the final product
and, i am in the process of recording for your "rainproject":-)
Hey Josh,
ReplyDeleteIt's actually probably true that distribution can be relegated to something like CDBaby, which then permits you to get your songs on iTunes, or anything like that. If you mark off $75 for that, you might be able to make that easy enough, otherwise, BandCamp and NoiseTrade look enticing. And, of course, you'll probably want to register the copyrights... which will cost money too.
My brother in law, Duane, who you've heard, made a few comments that really changed the way I look at my musical skills. One, which I'm sure you know, is that music is good or bad depending on how it impacts the people that listen to it. The second was about his distaste for pop music, because it's all polished with no mistakes- it sounds mechanical, and not organic. I was listening to Step Up To The Microphone (Newsboys) and on the track Tuning In, they end with a messed-up "faux-classical" guitar solo. Likewise, and I always laugh when I think of it, on If I Left The Zoo (Jars Of Clay) someone says at the end of Goodbye, Goodnight "I dropped my pick..." And the Relient K song Chap-stick, and Chapped Lips, And Things Like Chemistry, they end the song with "Oh, that's terrible" and a chord. Those all add human elements to it... so I've taken two lessons out of that:
1.) The songs don't have to be musically profound, they just need to be interesting and basically stick in peoples' heads. Good music is music that you want to listen to over and over.
2.) The recording doesn't have to be, and maybe should NOT be "perfect." It shouldn't be rife with mistakes, but it should still be human. (One reason I silently questioned the wisdom of your purchase of Melo-Dyne. Yes, it does awesome stuff, but why not just use a free vocoder plugin, and have that "human" element?)
Anyway, theories on how you should make an album abound, it's my perspective that it should sound almost like the artist is playing it live... a very nice performance, but live nonetheless. (And in our cases, with one man projects, like it's a band of ourselves.)