On Melancholy Hill

Cover of the song by Angus and Julia stone.

Santa Monica Dream

Hello Internet. Here I am telling the world that I have had the sudden desire to improve my ability to create music. I have had this happen several times in the past, but I would often start these projects and just not be happy with them so I'd stop halfway. No longer!

I have come up with an initiative to combat this and it is called: "Recording Songs That I Like For The Internet But Really For Me" or RSTILFTIBRFM for short. That's right. I'm creating (read: copying/covering) music and allowing all of your wonderful ears to hear it. This one is a Pixies song called Here Comes Your Man.

Since I gave these up so many times in the past, I decided that this time I would just create a minimum viable product (Any software engineers out there? No? Ok). Basically, there are glaring mistakes here and there. Eventually it got too late to make a lot of noise for my neighbor's sake and I left them in. Also if I allow mistakes, there's a higher chance these things actually happen, which is the entire point of the RSTILFTIBRFM initiative in the first place!

Anyways, the goal is to do this once a week and just see how long I can do that. Maybe the streak will end at 1, or maybe it will never end and my body will be forcibly donated to science to determine why I am immortal. In either case, putting this out here on the internet is just a way to maybe have some accountability and if that gets me doing this more then it's worth it.

Now, remember that this is for me and not for you. You just happen to be an onlooker whose curiosity may or may not have been piqued. If it has and you decide to give this a listen, you must NOT, and I repeat, must NOT enjoy it. It's not for your enjoyment, it's for my improvement. Do not take this away from me.

Keep it real.

Here Comes Your Man

Hello Ear-owners. The time has finally come. I've managed to create the next installment of Recording Songs That I Like For The Internet But Really For Me. I present to you Recording Songs That I Like For The Internet But Really For Me 2: Electric Boogaloo, or RSTILFTIBRFM2:EB for short. This time I did Look on Down From The Bridge by Mazzy Star.

I know what you're all thinking: "Arty! You said it would be a week until you did this one!"

Yes, yes I can expl-

"But you actually waited much longer than that. Many, many weeks have come and gone!"

...Yes...before you rudely interrupted me I was going to get there. Disembodied voices these days, sheesh! Anyways, yeah this is like the sixth time I've attempted the second installment of this thing. Gave in every other time and I'm not entirely sure why; I'm still searching for some answers there. I kept disliking the product of my work for one reason or another and reiterating until I lost motivation. 

So here's what I did, today I went back and took the second attempt out of these six failures and just decided to roll with the take I had. All the parts on this one were done in one take like 6 weeks ago with minimal tweaks today (I redid one line). Here's what that means: there are a lot of mistakes in this one. A lot of imperfections that I was draining my motivation fixing in other attempts. It's simpler and way less polished than Here Comes Your Man.

Thought about it some, and the spirit of RSTILFTIBRFM isn't to make something good, it's the follow through! So while I'm not entirely happy with the end result, I am happy that I managed to put it out there anyways.

Improvisation was something I was working on around this time, so the whole solo is improvised and was done in one take. I think that improvisation is the next step to being able to write my own music, which is something I'd like to do eventually.

Also, sorry to anyone who does not in fact own ears. I'm sort of excluding you with the opening of the post. I wish you luck that science can bring you hearing once again.

ProbablyNotArty