options
I want none
August 25
Opened up a Logic project titled “2044”. Not a year, like you’d think, but apparently the number of songs I started in the session. I’m exaggerating; there’s 16 song ideas in it. Took a few minutes adding markers to each individual section so it’s visually easier to distinguish.
What does that accomplish? It accomplishes it going from 11:44pm to 11:51pm.
A nice surprise awaited me: backup harmonies. I have zero recollection of ever recording them. Not quite sure they fit the rest of the vocals, but it was certainly nice of me to leave me the option. Just wish he had, you know, finished this horse S already so I can move on with my life.
August 27
Another song. Accidentally dragged an audio file too far into the wrong place, resulting in an alternate chord progression. Melodies bashed into each other to create something new. Laptop freezes when I do anything so these things happen. Not an efficient way of making music, to rely on them, but accidents often result in lovely things.
Then in a third project file, I discovered an entire guitar version of a song ‘done’ in piano. Do I have amnesia? Why do I not remember anything? I’m inclined to go with the guitar version because the piano sounds like it was recorded on an old Windows phone while it hurtled like a football through an air conditioning factory. Great imagery, guy.
It’s nice to have found the new part, but I hate having so many options.
August 29
Options strike again. 100% focusing myself in take after take. Hundreds of takes per line of vocals. You know why, but still it’s way too many. I am godawful at making decisions.
Any decisions. I’ve had panic attacks in bed looking at electric toothbrushes on Amazon. I used my broken Sonicare manually for three idiot years, bought expensive heads for it and everything, just because I could not bring myself to make a decision. Everything always feels fuckin’ irreversible.
Obviously it’s difficult for me, and I’m auditioning every take over and over, a/b’ing, adding an instrument next to it, taking everything out, listening to it while running away really fast, playing it on a shitty phone speaker while I’m in another room plugging my ears, etc. A lot of the takes are identical, some are so bad I’m pretty sure I can’t sing and I’m upset no one told me, and still there’s plenty left over to contemplate. What’s the right vibe? Is this enough energy? Is this off-key or am I having an aneurysm? Is this too scratchy? Too bassy? How many ‘bratos is appropriate for this particular vibrato? I’m compin’ takes by the syllable, it’s too much work for how not-great it all ends up sounding.
I pray for one single recording to stand out, that is so surely the correct decision, that I have no need to consider anything else. The Michael Jordan of vocal tracks.
August 30
Woke up in the middle of the night. Made the mistake of allowing myself to think. And I’m like: what the chocolate, butter, and milk a.k.a. FUDGE am I doing? Like, I’d like to pay the bills? Make a friend? Start a family? Instead I’m obsessin’ over…this?