Who knew it only took an hour and a half a day to be a rockstar?
I know rockstar is definetly overstating it but we aren’t that far off here. I’m making music I love and more and more people are taking notice and I am collaborating with more and more friends and playing shows with people I admire.
I don’t care about being a rockstar, THIS is exactly what I want!
I can’t overstate how much a little effort and a lot of excitement will get you. For years I thought this would take full time focus and effort, and lots of luck. But the exctiment and pragmatism means nothing is wasted.
Step by step, week by week, the pieces fall into place and before long, things that felt big just feel natural.
I have a live abum on the way, listened to the final mox of 4 tracks last night. Solid! Two more tracks to finish mixing (mostly EQ, compression and some subtle fliters).
Of course I am excited about this release but I am even more excited about how every step leads into the next, and how I am building something step by step.
All of this started with a 3 month push to improve my scales in order to be able to jam live and a bunch of cheap new equipment so I could graduate from being a fully accoustic player. At the end of that push I had a show where I jammed between each of my songs. It went extremely well and I wanted to do it again so I did a few months later, playing new songs the second time.
Somewhere in between a concept for a studio album came into view and I began working on songs in between editing videos and learning how to get a better tone on guitar.
Every day I spent about an hour and a half (average) on my music and things related to it. No more that that! Some days I spent 4 hours but the next day I’d be off. If I missed two days in a row I’d try to make up for it. I tried to make it an hour a day average but when I was excited I’d work longer and sometimes twice a day.
I edited the shows into music videos. The more I listened the more I realized it was the best output I had ever recorded and decided to turn the shows into a live album. All the while I was writing new songs and improving.
A friend offered to help me produce an album. Rather than letting them do all the dirty work, we’ve been discussing every iteration of each song. I asked if they could include a live abum in the deal since that would be quicker and easier to mix. But we’ve been talking about it every day.
In those talks my understanding of EQ and compression has definetly evolved and I am becoming more capable of mixing by myself next time (whether I do or not).
This has improved my tone at shows too and so I was invited to play at a regular event which I’ve mentioned before. Then most of my 1.5 hours a day goes into practice for the shows where jams sowly evolve into new songs.
Out of practice for these shows I have 3-4 new song ideas coming together for the NEXT studio album.
That means that if I keep it up at this pace I will have a live album out before summer, a studio album out by the end of summer and well on my way to recording a second album that could come out as soon as New Years, not to mentipn a book that’a tied to the themes of the first album.
Just a year ago I imagined an album would take me 2-3 years to put together, but since I’ve been hypercharged with enthuiasm, kept coming daily and focused less on deadlines and more on making real progress on some front every single day, I may end up making 3 albums and a book this year! Not to mention expand my reach tenfold.
I feel like a broken record constantly talking about these new projects but as they progress I learn new things and see the bigger picture coming together and it feels like there are lessons emerging from each step in the process.
You can hear these new songs as well as some old ones here: