I will have to update the actual music page shortly, but here’s just some random musings about my own ‘creative’ process and laziness.
Finally, having been on and off on my ‘new’ attempts to make music since 2023 (though really it was all starting to nag at me at least a year and a bit before, when I started feeling free and myself again), having accumulated instruments all along the way, I started to find myself a little more resolute at the start of August this year.
No football/sports, still recovering from the Achilles operation (on which note, despite writing a lot of random stuff on my notes, I shall not be doing a second part about rehab or anything on that diary), a lot of people away on holidays, so not many real life social interactions either.
In all that time, I’d bought a Squier Bass VI (it’d been itching at me, though ideally I’d have gone for a Fender, but they were more expensive, and crucially – yes I am that vain- the colour schemes didn’t suit me, and I say that despite the existence of a red and white one, but for this, I felt it really had to be more Cure-like, so a black with tortoise shell was just the ticket, now I am not entirely sure if the seemingly unsteady sound of the lower E string is because of quality or my own limitations) last year, a XII string (inspired by Miki Bereniyi, though she had a Stratocaster, but I felt the Squier Paranormal Jazzmaster XII looked nice, hell I even went for blue and white…), and even, madly and recently a beautiful Cherry Red & White Telecaster (Fender Player II this time), just because it looked nice, but really initially and in typical fashion, because I didn’t pay attention when buying a generic gig bag for the XII, that it was a little too short as the JM is longer. So what? Well I thought that if I needed to buy the correct bag, then I’d need to use that one (deciding not to use it for my first old guitar, long unused) for something else, and so….Telecaster, after all, remember I initially had the idea of buying a Telecaster when I got the Rick, and here I found a reasonable-ish price, and a great colour scheme. And I have to say I do like that guitar a lot, even the comfort of playing it, and it is also smaller than all my other ones. Anyway, yes, I had already briefly used that new digital recorder built a while ago, but not used that beat synthesizer (Korg volca drum, still not sure I will use it).
Another great tool I found was the Fender Mustang Plus device, great sounding little thing you plug into the guitar and you patch headphones into it and then…well you don’t need an amplifier. Just playing with that rekindled my taste for making music too.
Oh, and I also decided to buy an actual synthsizer, even well aware that I’d probably not know how to best use it, but I had this idea to add it on one of the songs, and well, once more, once I turned it on first time, I thought ‘wow, this sounds great’.
Still also have the Ovation, and the old ER-1 (wasn’t sure it was working but it is, hence the Volca drum probably being redundant). And yes I had bought a new multi-effect Zoom pedal, thinking the old one wasn’t working, when the issue was with the power supply. Don’t think I need two.
Anyway, yeah, you can now tell, on top of everything else, maybe it’s a case of boys will be boys, enjoying the gear and tech gadgets. So yes, it was time to start again a little more seriously with the space and time at my disposal. Already last year with the Bass VI, I had free subscription for 3 months for some Fender Guitar courses, that was very helpful, but in the end, I gave up again.
I already had that song that’s been in its simplest version here on this website, added bits of guitars here and there but it was very unsatisfactory, yet I decided it would be the first one I’d ‘finish’, but somehow I feel I’ve got to redo it all again, now that I’ve learnt a bit more about what I want to do etc. You can tell it takes time to find back old habits, get new ones and improve.
I’d actually started on a second song probably in April or May this year? Near the end of my time off due to the operation, I think. See, I need time and space, hence the starting points always being either December/January (time off), May, or Summer.
So in August, I tried to give myself a little time, even very little, sometimes just to play thanks to that little device, and sometimes to record, a bit. Still a bit on and off, sometimes close to giving up. But after a terrible month of July and part of August at work, as in….bored out of my tits, feeling underused, but still having to go there (on non -physio days) and at least be ‘connected’, I felt I was never totally free. So I decided that I’d take a few days off after all, and even a little extra, when I realised that due to the sick leave, I hadn’t actually taken the required 10 consecutive days between May and October, as my consecutive ones were across April and May. And it was a life-saver, I was uncertain at times (also days post going out, you have to shake yourself out of torpor a little more), but finally, due to a little luck (weirdly involving being defrauded of my credit card on the internet, and also a little day of depression pushing me to not even check the news for a few days), I found more space, to the point where mostly, I had nothing else to do but music (I am also currently without a book to read).
OK, I didn’t do that much, also it’s such a short period of time and I am totally dreading some bad reactions when going back to work finally on a couple of days*, but it all came back to me: how I am still too lazy, how easy it is to just have ideas, put a few chords or notes or sounds here and there. I mean, you can just make some sound, put notes together, you’ll feel what sounds great/OK/shit. It’s easier than writing words in many ways, as you don’t necessary have to express anything, and it doesn’t have to make any sense (this is debatable, but it is how I feel now).
But getting a structure (yes I still hate Jazz, despite not being called Johnny), playing it correctly, it takes time, effort, practice etc. Quite normal, but I’ve been so so lazy. Of course I don’t have the real need I had 20 and a bit years ago to prove myself I could do it (though I probably need to prove it again, just like when I really quit smoking rather than think I’d quit because I’d stopped for a few months), but I really have to make an effort. I mean, I actually took all the notes about settings at the time and even wrote the whole scores (the ink on the paper may be mostly faded yet), so I did that as well as I could to be reproducible, whereas now, I am a bit more loose in my efforts). Yet, from that first song, to the second, to the redoing one of the ‘demos’ already there on this website, I felt I was progressing in the way I was doing things. Still a big road, but I had these ideas and while some are still all over the place (and I still need to improve some patterns), the sounds are to a bigger extent what I wanted to do. I even adapted and created my own chains of effects, sometimes using the settings on the Mustang thing to create a new one on the Zoom from scratch and not getting it too far from what I wanted. Hell, even that particular idea I had about the synth on that new old song, I got that the way I wanted though again, bits are improvable, but I was chuffed about that.
So it’s an incremental process, one that needs practice, but I’m enjoying discovering it again, even if I don’t know how much I will/want to push it. I can’t say I’ll have enough time, I can’t say the creative juices are fully flowing again, but I can see it’s been a very positive month, and I have enjoyed making sounds, bits of music that sometimes even sound good to my ears. Sometimes a sound can come out of some weird improvisation. Take that Mustang thing: it’s only meant to be on headphones, yet I wondered if it would work the same when using the headphone output of that into the input of the recorder. The answer is no, it is not at all the same, and probably shouldn’t be workable. I think it adds a lot of delay, and yet, on one particular setting I’d created, I thought it sounded good, a sound I could use.
Also, I could ‘cheat’ and really record smaller bits and cut/edit correctly and put it side by side thanks to digital, but I think it requires some skills I don’t (yet?) possess, as it needs a lot of precision (actually one thing I still don’t do ok is be very metronomic, even when using the….metronome), so most of my recording process is still, so far : create the song pattern on keyboard sequencer (either the Yamaha or Roland, more on that anon), and then add bits along it live.
But, finally, for that new old song, as I had that idea that whether I’d keep the guitar-only second part, I’d better do that strumming along with the keyboard stuff. And there I finally used a little of the digital possibilities, by simply ‘looping’ the first recorded part. Ideally, you’d need to have it well cut, not have the few seconds of silence due to my way of recording getting in the way, but I decided not to risk things, so loop the whole thing without edition or cutting even one second (didn’t realise at first I could cut bits of a bar, rather than the whole of it), I used that as a transition. So yes, lots of possibilities etc, and I’ve not even scratched the surface.
And I’m not even getting into possible lyrics, never mind singing (though I get to the point where I regret having just 8 tracks, probably needing 12 to have a second singing line), which I find hard to consider as I don’t really have a theme though over the years I’ve got bits of lyrics here and there (hell among the acquisitions I have even bought a Cure SoaLW notepad, that remains empty for now), and mostly sometimes had idea that I never wrote down and are lost forever. I might have to do that at some point if I have enough material, but that’s certainly the hardest part, I don’t find the ideas/inspirations I had 23 years ago, but that’s in part because I don’t have the mindset I had then when I NEEDED to write an album.
There is also another layer of confusion now about how to do things. I mentioned the sequencers on the old keyboards, I restarted with the Yamaha because it was the easiest for me, the one I’d used most. But now I am considering not using it at all. The sequencer on the Roland is an absolute pain in the arse though for many reasons, and it’s really a keyboard that does a lot of things I don’t need either. Now the Korg has a 16 step sequencer, but not sure how to use that best or how. What I like with the other ones is you can still record infinite bits. But then, I guess with the digital recorder now, the possibilities are truly endless. Add to that that some stuff has become potentially redundant. The pads for the rhythm on the PSS don’t all work well, though they are easy to use. I can use percussions on the Roland (only via the keyboard though, and I can’t seem to work that out into the recording, damn shit sequencer), but then the digital recorder itself has some sort of pads labelled kick/snare etc, so drummming patterns should be added there. And of course I still have the ER-1. On top of that, the digital recorder itself has chorus/reverb (as does the Roland) etc. effects so I may not always even need to use the Zoom pedal. Or I could accumulate effects to create weirdness, see the way I already used the Mustang tool for that. That’s another avenue. I was fearing being limited by only 8 tracks with the way I work (it is probably best to separate everything rather than use three different things on the keyboard as is/was my first way of working), but I think I have read you can actually also merge tracks on that recording, freeing new ones. Yeah, many possibilities that in a way do not help me, as I need simplicity to some extent. But I need to learn and master new tricks if I want to improve my music, and I have certainly so far very much underused all the capabilities.
Anyway, enough faffing about for now, I should get back to the music (more likely tomorrow, I decided that today is a day for doing admin stuff, sometimes I need a breather), but finding back all those things about making music again, and the process, it’s just weird, I feel I have wasted so much time when there was a point I was finding it easier. But then, I suspect I had more of a social life then, and now I am trying just to find the right balance. Old songs/new songs, I hope I can do a bit more and improve my skills, but this past month has already felt a lot more productive than the last three years. I was reaching the point where making music again was just a pipe dream, but now I think I may be able to partly turn it into a reality. My mindset could change for the worse again when I don’t have the freedom of time and space I feel I have now (especially eschewing most web-based social interaction, I’ve actually been out or had guests many times in September, more than the previous few months, even before the injury, I think), but I have to keep the positives, even if I’m probably 10-20 years older than I should be at this stage of my personal development.
*(27/9) what I feared sort of happened. Not helped with the return of football either. I managed to keep some discipline for a bit, rerecording parts of one song to a level I was happy with, being more organised and taking notes for that, but somehow then stopped again, not also helped by little health things, physical, and maybe mental. The second part of the month was a bit of a rollercoaster. Still, after the Ruth Radelet gig, I decided buying a bass guitar was a good idea, and well, I have just done that, waiting for it now, to complete my set of instruments and get going again. But I’ll need to show a lot more discipline again. We’ll see. I didn’t do nothing, but I do, indeed, find it hard to find the time and space and peace of mind, despite also recording a couple more ideas on the guitar too, so have quite a few songs I’d like to work on.