The Resistance
I burned a bridge today. Maybe. I can’t be too certain, but I have to assume. The unfortunate nature of being truly in love with life is that you can’t seem to get enough of it. Basically all of the time. Just like the last few installments, this one is coming a little late, but once again with no excuses, just explanations and results. I would really love to say that I turned a new leaf and I am caught up, but alas. The bridge was one between myself and a new collaborator and friend. I had hoped to participate in a project involving some dancers and other instrumentalists. I was set to perform as a live electronic musician during the performance by manipulating the other performers in real-time and performing my own ethereal soundscapes. I had been working on writing other music set to the choreography and manipulating other source material to fit the vision. Unfortunately, things not working out is part of life.
This won’t be the first time that I have had to make hard decisions about my time. After all, I have been “half-in, half-out” of music school for the past. I made that decision in very similar circumstances.
I have other projects that require my time. The problem is I can’t get enough of life. I love all the projects. I have been better about “saying no” in the past, but I can never be perfect. I can never predict how the tides will change in a project’s life or when the car needs to go to the shop and it eats up half of your day or there is a sudden change in the scheduling of seeing your family on the other side of the country. No, those are not random examples.
Unlike other times, I decided that this is an example of an instance that I need to prioritize school before other projects. I truly dislike backing out of projects for reasons that technically “can wait”, but this is a time where I have had to be truly self-evaluative. I have been putting off making (well, releasing) my own music for years at this point. “It can wait” has been the attitude forever. So, I guess it’s true. It’s also eating me alive. It might be a school project, but for me it is the biggest hill I’ve ever climbed.
The Project
What is it exactly? It’s a school project. It is the equivalent to a diorama. We all made those in elementary school, right? I distinctly remember making one with my Dad about Native American houses sometime in elementary school. Well, he made it really, but I glued a thing or two. This is just a project for a careers in music course. It’s really funny how framing certain tasks really changes things. This is installment four of eight of a project aimed at helping me expand my professional life and career in the music field. This is literally the last academic assignment between me and a Doctorate in Music. All I have to do is write a few songs, create my music making brand online, make some videos to go with them as visualizers, and put them out. Those are the guidelines that I laid out for myself. Welp, bridge burned, time to get to work.
The Art
So this is the week to show off the final mixes right? Well, yes, but I did some more listening and thinking. The two tracks that I will release have actually already been heard in this series, and one of them will be released completely “as-is”. Before we jump into that. Let’s hear at least one more of the ideas from the vault. This is a special song because it was written during a semester that I was enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. One of my classmates loves it and it was used in the final project “commercial” for our fake, driver-less delivery vehicle service. We got a B.
That track was also a very close second, for me, to the two tracks I will actually release. Maybe it will see the light of day sometime. Next up is the aforementioned “as-is” track. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, I took some time to sit back and really analyze what I had written so far. I love this piece. It was specific moment in history, and it symbolizes something I really believe in. Music is a journal entry.
Oh, and secondly, I didn’t bounce the audio from my modular synthesizer rig. This means that I could put it back together very close to the original, but it can never be the same, truly. That’s the beauty of modular. Lastly, I will release the most recent song we heard from this series. This one was a lot closely to arranged than I was originally led to believe, so I gave it a good mix. This may still take a little tweaking over the weeks, but let’s call it final mix 1. For those that might not have gotten that joke, there is running joke among producers and engineers that there is never a single “final mix”. I’ll likely never break that stigma.
So that is this update. I hope you like it. It’s late, and I have visualizers to…well visualize. I’ll leave you with this, dear reader.
I want to be like John Dillinger
Just try and catch me if you can
And we could drive off in the sunset
Even if it’s not the plan
‘Cause plans are overrated
‘Cause you never really know where you’re going
And the past is always changing
Ain’t been gold since I remembered it that way
-Eden
Griffin Law Music 