Some days I seem to be stuck in top-level organizational mode. Today I’m working on lyrics and trying to fill out the album, but I’m finding it difficult to get close to the material. I’ll make some progress, but find it hard to focus. This lack of focus manifests itself on other levels of the creative process, too – I could be working with a given song’s project file, revising or adding to something I’d worked on earlier, and find it hard to do anything other than arrange big pieces of the work, or adjust the mix.
I think I develop kind of a hoarder mindset toward the work I’ve created. I’ve created a maze of folders and files that contain snippets of ideas with unhelpful names like “Snarble”. When I think about these songs away from a computer, I can never really hear them in my head with the same luster and sparkle they have coming out of headphones or speakers. I assume this means they’re not that good, but when I hear the playback I get enthused again and decide I should finish the song. It’s not unlike how a shut-in might consider tossing his weathered copy of Moby Dick, only to decide that he should probably hang on to it because he’ll finish it someday.
Wow, I sound like a real bummer.
So knowing that this is something I tend to do, I frequently return to the idea of starting afresh with a new set of tools and/or a new way of doing things (to distance myself from unfinished work). This means that my project files can be in a variety of formats and on multiple computers, which is not good for organization. It would probably be helpful for me to bounce individual tracks down, and import them all into the same program for mixing. I did this on my first two albums because I did not trust ReWire (ReWire is a means of connecting audio programs. It makes my life a mess).
I think this process has also led to the distillation of some of my musical ideas. Not that this is a good thing. Metaphorically shoving everything off my desk leads me to write very directly. I like to imagine that Melville literally cleared his workspace like this before penning “Call me Ishmael.” (After which I like to think he sat there satisfied with himself for a minute or two). The end result is heavy, simple music that gets progressively denser. I think in some ways I’m trying to conjure a Devo-like sound world, or like that of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider”
Here’s a sample of an instrumental track that exemplifies this. I have a few vocal ideas, but if I can’t come up with a solid vocal melody, then the song doesn’t stand enough on it’s own. The screaming synth in the 2nd verse can only carry the song so far.
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Well this has certainly been a lengthy discussion, though also pretty helpful for me. While writing this I was able to polish up some things I’d sort of forgotten about.
