He's gonna take you back to the past...
20/21 Story Time
First lemme give some background, around late 2019 I started to learn to make music. I set myself a challenge of arranging my first song, and I pulled it off! I put out a song called "Continue?", it wasn't amazing sure, but it was a complete song with a nice structure. During this time I was hyperfocused on music, and everything was happening very quickly. A month later I'd made what are in my opinion the two best songs on 19/20 (Garden & Rain), and in September I put out the album. I use the term Album loosely, 19/20 was just meant to be a collection of early work really, it wasn't mastered or structured like you might structure an album. It's name refers to my third-year of university from Sept 2019 to Sept 2020.
After 19/20 I had every intention to make a follow up called 20/21 encapsulating my work from Sept 2020 to Sept 2021. I had put together many rough demos and created the cover art. Hooowever, a few things did get in my way just a bit. Covid happened, I moved (twice, into bad environments both times), lost a job, picked up 3 new jobs... Life was being a bit much. I couldn't really focus on music and that's why all of those rough demos stayed rough and unfinished. Which brings us where we are today.
Making Music
It's been about a month since I got the music itch again, and I've gotta say it just keeps growing. I am having so much fun working on my first proper album. It's definately been slower this time, but it's super imporant to me that I hold onto this energy. I think there's a few main things that have been slowing me down this time. Firstly, I'm working a 9-5 job now, I intentionally do my very best to keep as much of my time around that free, I don't make many commitments and I avoid responsibilities like the plague because I know that right now I want to be focusing on music. It's really important to me, but I don't have the free time I used to have as a student.
Secondly, I'm a bit rusty. I've had to remember how to write nice chord progressions, how to mix drums, how to structure a song. Some of it comes naturally, like sometimes a song just happens, but sometimes it takes more critical thinking. I think this can be a double edged sword, it could lead to more interesting structure over more revisions, but it also could slow me down trying to perfect something that's already done, or being stuck in choice paralysis. Which leads perfectly into my last challenge...
Finally, I have a higher standard for my music now. It's surprising to me, how much I've kinda ambiently learned. And really I shouldn't say that, I've been studying music production and my genre for literally years now, I haven't practiced it nearly as often as I should have, but of course I've learned something. It's kinda neat, when I'm working on songs these days, what I make is much closer to what I imagine than before, and even rough ideas sound better than anything I've released so far, and yet I still consider the majority of what I make not up to scratch. Aiming for a higher standard does mean that songs take longer to make, but I'm much happier with the end product. It does mean that I've had to get much more comfortable with iteration, making ideas quickly and throwing stuff away.
Other Stuff
What else is new? I'm not ill anymore so I've spent most of the last week working on Track 2 of the next album. I'm making good progress... but it's challenging. I have a very clear vision for this song, but it's not quite like anything I've made before. Or rather, I've never managed to pull it off before. But I'm getting close! I reckon that the weekend following this post, I'll be finalizing the thing. Aside from music, which is becoming a constant these days, I've been helping a good friend move in with me, which is really cool. We've live together before, not under the best circumstances, so it's great that this time around we're both in high spirits.
OH, also I've been playing Minecraft a bit- can't remember if I mentioned that. I'm really bad at Minecraft, but I have a server. If you wanna join being a discord member is a prerequisite, you can find that in the about page. Ok cool that's pretty much it.
Peace & Hair Grease
~Codie