This term my goal was to write a song, and record it all from scratch. I somewhat achieved this goal, but also have a some of it left to accomplish. I thought for a final closure blog post, it would be helpful to see how far I got and celebrate that success, as well as determine what is missing still, and how I might achieve those goals in the future.

Successes:

  • I did in fact write lyrics to my own song!
  • I chorded out this song (and made some changes to it along the way)
  • I found a systematic way of creating lyrics that works for my brain by analyzing the work of song writers whom I look up to
  • I explored new digital audio workstations, and ended up recording some MIDI audio in Band Camp for the first time

Space Left to Grow:

  • I did not fully finish recording my song (I need vocals!)
  • I found it difficult to stay motivated through the process and it become sort of a chore midway through the semester
  • I still find it terrifying to post my work online and it feels imperfect

Overall, I am proud of the work I put together. I have always found songwriting to be daunting and scary even though I would consider myself a creative person and do truly enjoy covering the music of other folks (and have occasionally recorded such pieces!) I found it to be this “black box” so to speak that was very unfamiliar and difficult to wander through. However, by the end of the semester, I found it was actually much easier to write than I thought it was, and part of doing it is not being afraid of failure and getting it right all the time right out of the gate.

As far as overcoming some of my short comings, I think it could be really valuable to work with a friend or two that produces music (I happen to know a few folks!) and get over the hurdle of recording music by working with them and then slowly transitioning to working in my preferred DAW on my own. It’s just simply hard to avoid the huge learning curve with music production – but this “baby step” approach makes the work a lot more fun and motivating than me trying to do this completely on my own.

A second way I want to try to overcome this music production hurdle is to spend more time learning from experts via online masterclasses or youtube videos to supplement working with a friend in music production. I found this half hour masterclass (linked below) which I will watch after working with a buddy to help me kickstart the “solo” process (among other videos, probably)