It's taken a year but I've almost finished fourteen songs. I tried to leave it alone yesterday, but still spent two hours editing the backing vocals of one of the songs. It's still going to be a very DIY sound but it's my DIY sound. Things that ought to be easy have been difficult, and vice versa.
I'll spend much of today working on it too. I've tried to replace the vocals on a couple of songs but it's not working: the cogs are not in the right position just yet, but I know I'll get there.
Then I have to set up the speakers and invite Ruth round to take a listen. I really trust her ears because she has had the same slightly odd relationship with music as I have. It was Vic Godard who pointed it out: her upbringing was largely pop-music-free and I had that huge break while I was raising my Offsprogs. I had burned out, and resolved to pay back the help I'd had in my youth from people like Vi Subversa by helping young musicians myself, which led to an accidental career as an academic and no music making at all. It seemed pointless by then because all the young student musicians that I was working with were so brilliant. It was the magical Jamie McDermot who encouraged me back into playing again, and by then a head of writing steam had built up from not doing it for nearly 25 years that propelled me to write and write and write.
No doing it for a long spell is a really good way of doing it differently when you come into it again. There are new rules- but what the hell. Feeling like an imposter is very character-forming.
I woke in a panic at dawn. I worried about everything. Underneath it all is a fear that what I have created is not music at all, just a sequence of random noises that nobody has had the guts to tell me is rubbish. This is the definition of paranoia! I haven't 'tested' anything yet, and the actual music has been hidden away. What's going to happen when I let it out to play?
it will fly!
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