Hello! If you’re a new subscriber, this is what’s going on here: I started including readers who were interested in following along how I go about writing and recording a new song. Here’s a footnote listing the song posts if you want to see from the beginning.1
This video has me beginning to record the song, “Hurry.” At first, this will be just a home demo. I use a more equipped studio for recording drums and mixing—you’ll see when we get there. I have a few quality pieces of equipment I use to record with and I’ve gotten pretty decent at doing this: here’s the details of my gear if you want to know more.2
I’ll be keeping these videos short n’ sweet. Recording can be tedious if one isn’t actively involved. The stuff I’m editing out is a lot of repetition, trial and error. I only want to show the (hopefully interesting) sequence of my progress and convey the creative process—the same as I discussed in earlier stages of the song: coming up with ideas, executing them, making judgments about which ideas stay and which go.
To begin, I want to be sure about the tempo of the song. I consider two things in determing the tempo: First, what pacing highlights the song best, captures the vibe and energy of it. Second, I want to make sure the tempo that I’ve chosen is suitable for the lyrics, that they can all fit in without having to rush the words. Sometimes I have to compromise between the two elements.
Pardon me, I have to go here for a minute….
After I choose the speed, I always put a “guide” guitar and vocal. These are the framework, not to be kept, but to have something to build on. And after the guides, I find some drum loops I like. Why don’t I just make the guides the “real” track you may wonder? Good question. Because I will do better performances as the tracks build, and each part I do affects what follows. My rhythm guitar part won’t likely change much, but I will take more time with the real one, getting a great amp sound and playing it the best I can.
Ideally, one is in a studio recording with a band, or at least a few other musicians you like, or at the very least, a drummer. But I like instant gratification with a new song, I don’t want to wait to line up players and book studio time and all that. I want to start creating the music that makes the song a finished thing as soon as possible. It’s fun, and also, then I can move on to another song.
I needed to write this before it gets too far away from me. Four days, from Tues afternoon through Sat afternoon, I had no power in my home. No heat, no tv, no internet, no lights. I also had no water for two days. This was all due to a vicious ice storm Monday night. The sound of my beautiful trees cracking, breaking, and falling from the weight of the ice was like gunfire. The bigger trees falling sounded like thunder, intermingled with the actual thunder of the storm. At night, both me and my kitty cats would startle awake with the crashing canopy of branches on the roof and around my home.
I stayed in my house despite having several offers to go stay at friends, or choosing the option to go to a hotel. I got to thinking about the choice, what it revealed about me. None of this is meant as judgment or critique about how other people handled the same situation. It’s merely self-reflection, an observation. As that radical ancient Socrates expressed rather harshly: “the unexamined life is not worth living.” (Supposedly—nearly all of what Socrates said is second-hand, relayed and written by students like Plato, or sometimes critically reviewed by those who felt dissed by him.)
Regardless, being conscious and aware of our motivations and behaviour is a good road map to the always great destination of “to thine own self be true.”
I started out staying home because I was sure power would come back on in a couple of hours. Then it became about not wanting to pack up and move Gingerman, Rocky, and all their cat accoutrements. I wasn’t going to leave my pets in the rapidly plunging temperature of the house—it got down to the low-fifties.
Then it became about something else. I wanted to live in my home as it was, to adapt to my surroundings, to get by, be resourceful. I’m not a martyr, nor do I like suffering—I’m just your garden variety Stoic. It’s my nature, or what I evolved into.
I also place a high value on competency and dealing with shit that needs dealing with.
My resources included a mini-generator, chargeable with solar panels, that I could use to charge my phone and laptop. It also powered a small bedside lamp for reading, nested under a mountain of duvet and blankets. I even used it to heat up the tea kettle, until I figured out that I could light my stove burner with a match and boil water or heat food. On the second night, I looked outside and realized I could bring my solar pathlights inside and place around the house in flower vases. A few flashlights helped out and burning through my candle supply added some ambiance.
I have a fireplace which I’d used once years ago—it filled my house with smoke (yes the flue was open)—but by day 3, I was so cold I decided to give it another go, filled my car with cords of wood, and voila, it worked.
I made the mistake of posting on social media my situation, and got a lot of advice and suggestions that I didn’t really need—including someone informing me about “this thing called hotels.” It reminded me of my new friend Lauren Hough’s Substack where she wrote recently about her dying dog and getting unwanted advice. People mean well, but if I’m looking for answers or solutions, I’ll ask. Usually I just want to vent and find company and solidarity.
Btw, Lauren’s Substack Badreads is wonderful and she’s about to embark on a road-trip-book-writing-adventure. I look forward to tagging along via her newsletter. One of the best things about writing a book has been that my circle of acquaintances and friends now includes far more writers than it ever did before.
By mid-day Saturday I felt powerful in the powerless house and actually looked forward to my cozy little set up: the sofa pulled up close to the fire, a lamp and candles, books, journal, and guitar to keep me from feeling lonely and bored.
I spent most of that day outside, cleaning my yard, picking up piles of leaves with my hands and bagging up the debris of the storm. I was thinking, a lot, about another Substack I subscribe to, from Hanif Kureishi. He is providing the most moving and emotionally charged reading I’ve had in a long while. Highly recommend. Start at the beginning of his life changing accident on Jan 7th, 2023. Be prepared to weep, laugh, contemplate, imagine, hurt, marvel, and mostly to fall in love with a complete stranger who is revealing, in real time, the most unimaginable losses of bodily function.
It is Hanif’s writing about the longing for his hands that was affecting me so deeply yesterday. With each scoop of leaves and twigs from my garden beds, bare-handed, I felt a brush of gratitude. The sun broke out from a silvery sky, a lit reminder that everything changes: ice melts, things break, shapes change, we lose what we have. It became a beautiful day decorated in the remnants of storm carnage. It had gotten warm enough to work in a T-shirt. I cut down bushes of dead lavender, running my hand over the stalks, getting a little ping of joy that the brown leaves still released a freshly light scent. I raked and swept and skimmed, filling yard bags, and made a pile of twigs to use for fires. A workout without going to a gym to get it always feels like a big bonus. Even one accompanied by a soundtrack of chainsaws gnawing their way down neighborhood streets bordered in broken cedar, yaupon, oak and juniper trees.
When I’d go inside, I’d get hit with a blast of cold, retained from the previous days of freezing weather. It felt good at first, then weird to be shivering inside when it was nice outside, so I’d go back out and work some more.
I cut and pruned for another hour after the sun decided to go back into hiding. I thanked it for energizing my generator, back up to 100% and suddenly the pool pump spluttered into business. The power was back on.
Because I’m half-heartedly woo-woo about some stuff, I half-thought it was connected to the little philosophy that guides my life: don’t focus on what’s wrong, just take care of yourself and what needs doing, and the going wrong stuff will take care of itself. It plays out over and over, and feels way better than being pissed about having no power.
In Detour I show how I came up with the melody and chord progression. At the end of Afternoons Around the Sun there’s an audio recording of me figuring out some new lyrics. And Incremental Progress shows the trial and error of figuring out the rest of the song, or most of it.
I use an API mic pre, I have 2 of them and used to be able to record a whole band—but now I just pretty much use the same input since it’s just me. I also have a UA 1176 for compression and a very cool 70’s Neuman U67 microphone. I record all my guitars using a small Gibson Skylark amp, and I do the bass tracks direct into the board and use plug-ins to make it sound the way I want. I use Stylus Spectrasonics RMX for drum loops, but like to go into a studio to record drums or send the tracks to a drummer who can access a studio.
10) Cura Te