Plans for Next CD (after SoftWetFish)
 

(June 5, 2006)
So, "SoftWetFish" has finally been out for 2 weeks or so. I'm now doing the daily google scan to look for new reviews.

...and I'm thinking for the next project I'd like to do a really ambitious 'pop' cd - composed songs, with lyrics and different instruments. Rhythms, chord progressions and all that, bastardized since I wouldn't know what I'm doing, but unique in that I'd be making up answers for the stuff I don't know.

So, I have 2 possible ideas for this:

1) I have a great photo that I found - a chemically degraded image of a mountain lake, where the back says "This is the lake where I took you as a child...and we chased the hunters away". Very haunting. I'd love to do a cd around this that would be about personal nostalgia and memories that revolve around natural places. My childhood home bordered the state park - woods. I loved walking/biking/horseriding through them, but there was always the fear of running into a bear or evil person. I will definitely do this one someday, the question is whether I'm mentally/musically prepared to do it now.

2) I'd also like to do my best approximation of a rock album, holding Portishead/Prince/Bad Company/Nine Inch Nails as possible ideals, except with what I currently have in my bedroom studio. Obviously it wouldn't (and shouldn't) sound anything like the above mentioned bands but probably some weird rocky/funky concoction with a lot of that weird sound design stuff I do. Stripped down. Soulful? Even if the lyrics are strange, I'd be taking it very seriously. Not silly/stupid stuff. It might wind up murky/trippy like the Muck cd, or clean cut and weird like Anti Pop Consortium. I'd have to see how it goes.

Either project would involve me singing and playing lots of instruments. I'd probably hire friends to sing and play too. Either project would take a few years, lots of discipline, and lots of changes in the way I've been recording music. I'd have to rebuild my computer workstation so I don't get sick of it after 20 minutes. I'd need to be willing to throw away songs I'd spent months working on, on the basis that they're not up to snuff. And I'd have to learn a ton of new stuff, but that's what this is all about.

I'm really leaning towards #2 - I'd need to have a lot more composition skill to be ready for #1.

(January 2, 2007)
Ok, here I am, 6 months later, and I still haven't started on the new solo cd yet. What's holding me up? A few different things.

My home "recording studio" is not what I would like it to be.  I bought some nice microphones (nice by my standards anyway) and hooked them up.  One's a cardiod vocal mic and the other is a shotgun mic. Even though both are made to cover a specific range of space, they pick up lots more environmental noise than the $30 Radio Shack mic I was using before. Guess I have a lot to learn. Also, since everything's in my bedroom, I need to shuffle around 20 minutes cleaning and re-arranging things if I want to set up to record any instrument. If it's guitar or bass, I have to wrassle with the 60hz hum, since the wiring in my building isn't so hot.

I'm thinking of buying a laptop computer this year, so I could do things like go to where there's a piano and record a piano track. Or I could lock myself in a quiet room and record quiet things.

In addition, I've spent the last several months in a real slump, which I might be starting to come out of.

...But I have done a ton of thinking about this the whole time. I've decided I'm probably not going to do #1 or #2 above, but something in between. I've been coming up with lots of musical ideas in my daily life which I soon forget since I don't write them down, but there are common themes. Many sound like sad little country ballads, except I'd try to avoid the obvious method of doing it all with guitar.  Instead it'd be drum machine, bass, accordion, found objects, sampler, etc. I have an acoustic guitar in which the strings have been so out of tune for the last 10 years that they rattle, and yes, I like play it that way.

I'm both excited and frightened of this idea. The last several times I've tried to do something remotely like pop music, I got into this mode of "ok, here's the drum loop, here's the noise source, and here's the melody", and I've hated many of the results. So I've brainstormed ideas about how to avoid drum loops but still have a percussive skeleton. My two biggest fears are 1) the process of writing lyrics, then singing them into a microphone, then someone listening to them later, and 2) trying to sit down and record this great idea, and not being able to reproduce how things sound in my brain. I have to be willing to accept that, be willing to have ideas turn into other things.

I'm not a great singer, and I'm certainly not great at many of the instruments I'm planning to play, but that's part of the point. I'd like to do things about imperfections, how fallibility makes us interesting, and maybe putting different frameworks on things we usually consider mundane. I'm planning to ask several people I know to contribute - I just need to figure out the best way to work them in without driving them crazy with my obsessive compulsiveness about texture.

...and in the end I very well might just bury the end result rather than trying to release it, so this will be more of a personal workshop than anything.