The transition into electronic music is giving me a ton of opportunity to learn new stuff--and new stuff is really the stuff of life to me in so many ways--when I am learning, I feel quite literally engaged with the act of being alive, and I really don't know a better way to explain it than that.
Learning Is So...Healthy.
This mix represents a largess of learning. It is a totally livemixed track I made a few weeks ago during a livestream on IG...but, like much of the-internet-at-large, those performances--which can be so magical, are only enjoyed by a few people at a time, so I was stoked to have the audio from it to share with you here.
It's a really chill, 16-minute lofi jam and I hope you enjoy it. Play this one when you're waking up in the morning, having your first cup of coffee, when you're doing your evening stretches, when you're enjoying a bowl, when you're making dinner...it's a chill mix for chill times, and I really hope you dig it.
I think it emotes more as either specifically a middle-of-the-night song or an early-in-the-morning song--let me know in the comments what you think. I know those are extremes but, to me at least, it seems to flow between the two. You be the judge. <3
Engaging in the Process
There is such a difference between just going through a process or a stage and actually engaging the process--and I feel like for, in many ways, for the first time in my life, I'm actually taking a full role in the process: I'm letting myself become moved by it. I'm letting myself become enthralled with it.
This is both a very good thing and an incredibly bad thing.
I keep coming back to the feeling that I'm drowning in nostalgia...and that's what it feels like: drowning. It feels like suffocating. It makes me feel like all of my walls that once felt so friendly and warm are closing in on me, and that feeling is epically frustrating. It's a side-effect of writing lyrics for a number of these songs for the new record that just was not expected in the slightest.
I feel, simultaneously, both very freed through this process and very trapped by it. It's the most beautiful feeling in the world, wrapped up in terror...much like the general subject matter of a good chunk of these songs.
I know I've mainly been sharing instrumentals at this point--more on why later--but there are songs with lyrics on the way, and they've been both so easy and so tough to write.
This whole album has been a journey. Again, transitioning to this new style of music in a performance aspect is super fun, but also super scary--I've been used to spinning a number of plates on stage since I have been doing the whole live-looping thing for a number of years.
However, this scenario is different. While I am working toward incorporating more of those live elements (right now I'm pretty much just playing the piano and just started singing along with a few of these tracks this week), I'm just working hard at this point to learn Ableton, to apply the correct plug-ins to the correct places, to apply my knowledge of EQ to a totally different DAW and interface (and total system) than I am used to.
One thing I talked alot about in the old days, was how I really wanted to do as much as possible with only the resources I had immediately--which, for a number of years, was pretty much exclusively an iPhone and an iPad.
...and I won the iPad in a raffle by joining my local Arts Council something like five years ago. So awesome. I'd never have been able to afford one at that time. Just a true blessing.
And I've put it to work. GarageBand has been incredibly good to me. I've used it to get back into the piano over the past three or so years, and it was truly my handshake with actually and finally getting into recording and into the production aspect of music.
I have GarageBand to thank in a huge way for that, and I wouldn't trade my time with it for the world--but it's time that I upgraded to something a little, well, meatier. I picked up a part-time job last summer to give myself a break from having to schedule gigs every two seconds just so I could feel like I was contributing to my household, anyway--I got a laptop, and I'm really stoked about it.
Originally, the laptop was purchased so I can write the Next Great American Novel, and I still plan to do that--but I have to get this album out of me.
It's purge time.
Purge time is way overdue.
This music is all a part of that thing.
Thank you for being here with me.
Thank you for always being so awesome. I greatly appreciate your suggestions, upvotes, reblogs, follows, and comments. The genuine spirit of creation, sharing, and constructive transparency in this community are what make it so special.
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edit: corrected incomplete sentence