If you asked me who I was, all the way through college my answer would have been “a musician.” After college ended, however, I realized that more and more those words moved farther down the list. My answers became long winded and ended with “and I’m also a musician” and sadder yet turned into “well, I used to be a musician…”
Recently, I decided to change that, to reverse my descent into a music-less life and once again take up the art that has caused me more joy and more unhappiness than anything else in the world. Why am I writing about it? For amusement of the masses, I suppose. I’m also doing it for myself. It is often said that writing is therapeutic.
Let me start by telling you that I am currently in the middle of recording my very first EP. It has been an extremely long process for me. I’ve played the piano since I was five years old and in all that time (I’m now in my late 20s) I was only able to start writing songs fairly recently. I’ve had to make a transition between being a copycat of sorts, playing the works of other composers, to a completely original musician. Everything I knew from being a classical pianist was pretty much out the window when it came to writing modern songs. I would sit at the piano and mope because nothing I wrote ever came out right.
I remember asking someone who was in school with me how he was able to write so prolifically and he told me that “it’s all a mind game with yourself.” I took that to mean that I was psyching myself out every time I wrote a phrase, which was why I could never complete a decent song. It took me several more years to figure that out, but I finally feel like I’m at the point in my life where I can write just about anything I want to write. I seem to find inspiration in so many things in my life that I can only be thankful it finally happened for me. I’m not saying my stuff is genius, but it does get better and better with each song I write.
So, as of now, I have five songs recorded, and I’m struggling with my performances. Out of the five, I think only four of them are useable and out of that only two of them are really good. I got to a certain level and felt I was ready to record, but the recording process itself was such a learning process that I almost feel like I have to go back to the beginning, except that I can’t afford that, so I’m working with whatever I have and am just trying to make it better as I go along. And all the while, I keep writing more songs.
So here’s the deal, I plan on writing down all of my experiences as I go through them. I’m sure you’ll hear about my successes and my failures, the new things I learn, and everything else in between. So wish me luck as I go forward into the highs and lows of my musical journey.
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