I did some work over the weekend. I found this Indian tabla loop on  Garageband, and I'm using it for one of my songs. After listening to Sgt. Peppers, I've always wanted to record something that sounds Indian. I was trying to record this one to sound like Heroin, but it just didn't work out. I didn't have enough interest in it. But for this Indian version, I'm always excited to work, which is necessary and vital. I'm using an old Squier strat as an Ostrich guitar, which means that all the strings are tuned to the same note. The sound has a lovely shimmer and it sounds like a sitar, at times. I actually rewrote the whole song lyrically to fit the music. I have the rhythm track down. I need violin and lead vocals for now, and then I'll mess around with overdubbing if I have time. I had a change in ideas for another of my songs, Tony & Jen. I was thinking some guitar part, like from Run, Run, Run, and talking the lyrics over the music. But this weekend, I couldn't stop listening to Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll. Those were the two songs for the weekend, and I was influenced enough to make Tony & Jen sound like a Lou Reed tune. I've already come up with a chord progression, and I have some ideas. This one will be easy hopefully. The Non-Sequiturist by Mark Lesseraux is a good song to follow for this one, too.

Today I began to doubt whether or not I could finish this EP. I'm definitely retreating to a fallback position. I haven't done much work, and it's basically summer out, the weather's nice, and all my friends are constantly calling me to hang out. It's really hard! I haven't lost any motivation in completing the EP, though. I'm just going to have to change things around because of the loss of time. I'm cutting out my last two songs I had written, which are Blue and Good Morning Vietnam. I think these were my stronger songs of the whole bunch, in terms of lyrics, but they were the least interesting to me. Usually, when I think about a song of mine that I'm really into, I get excited to record even if I haven't started laying down anything, but these two songs don't catch my attention at all. They're done. I wrote them, and there's nothing more that's going to come out of those two songs. I'm definitely remorseful that I don't have the time to at least try to make these into recordings, but I know that if I tried now, I would have a horrible time. 

I have an idea for an Intro, too. While I was recording my first song, I was looking through the loop library, which has a lot of interesting sounds. There's this loop called Delicate Piano and I just slipped it into the beginning of the song. It's quiet and fades out by the time the song actually begins, but that gave me an idea. I remember records where the intro track carries over to the beginning of the second song, like  Sgt. Peppers into With A Little Help From My Friends. My idea is to have a single piano playing some riff while I do a monologue that I'll write. It'll be a weird mashup of these two scenes from Tarnation, one a young Jonathan Caouette talks about his life and mother while the other is an older Jonathan filming himself. I'm not sure what it'll be about, but it's keeping me interested. I'm excited (and scared) to write something that isn't a song.

Right when I started to record today, I realized I forgot my mic wires at school. I wasn't that disappointed, though. My plan B was to write my last song, which is exciting because I have written in forever. I listened to Tim Buckley's Sing a Song for You, which inspired me. I like the lyrics in that one, and sometimes, one good song is all I need to get myself back into action.

Another reason that I'm dying to write is that my project is starting to feel old. These songs were written at least one month ago, and they've been sitting around waiting to be recorded. I know recording old songs isn't a big issue; everyone does it all the time. But I feel sort of detached from the work. Songwriting is still relatively new to me, and I think as a songwriter in this early stage, I'm blooming and growing exponentially. I'm moving through different things quickly, and thus, I'm progressing at a fast pace. The songs I wrote a month ago made sense to me and I loved them, but I feel like they're sort of fading away now. I remember I was watching this Radiohead documentary and Thom Yorke said something about how after he's done with an album, the work isn't his anymore. Since he's lost the emotion captured in those songs, after he makes the songs, they're someone else's, like the listener's. I don't really agree with this 100%, but I have a sense of what he might be talking about.

I'm supposed to be writing my PIG paper right now. It's due on Tuesday and I'm not letting the stress hit me. But truthfully, I am scared of not finishing it.

I'm almost finished with my first song and I started messing around with my electric guitar for my song, My Silver Knight. I really like the clean electric guitar sound and texture that I'm getting, and it's fun to play with. I still haven't fixed the ground loop problem. I might bring the amp to school and record there if possible or borrow my friend's amp. I've been through 3 wires and a bunch of outlets, but still nothing. I won't be making progress on it for until Tuesday because of PIG. But I have an idea for my last song. It's really simple with just acoustic guitar and maybe violin. It's like one of those simple songs that are last on a soundtrack or comes on with the credits once the movie's over. Something like The Wrestler by Bruce Springsteen or this pop ditty called Winding Road by Bonnie Sommerville. It'll be a letter of sorts to my mom. The lines I have so far are: Mama, it isn't enough. That's the first line. 

Laid down the acoustic track for the first song Grow Up. I put the mic back 2 feet from my guitar amp and gated the buzz out. The result is this surf rock kind of sound, so I put down this track of rapid strumming. It's alright. I'm tired now, so tomorrow I'll put down the basic violin track. I read somewhere that John Cale used mandolin and guitar strings on his viola. I might do something like that. I have a few spare violins lying around the house. I also want to try tuning each string on the violin or guitar a whole step, another technique the VU used. I'm adding tambourine and maybe a background vocal on this sooner or later. I tried out the lead vocal today. I'm looking for this soft, kind voice. A problem I'm running into is that my b and p sounds are making weird bass thuds on the track. I'm not sure what it's called, but I think that's why people have fishnets or screens over their mics. I'm using a little condenser mic so I'm not sure how I'm going to solve this one. I could borrow a nicer condenser mic from my bandmate if nothing works out.

This first one's a simple one. But I need to be more clever with arrangements. I'm banning myself from the acoustic guitar for the next few songs. It's a nice control or rule to have, and I'll definitely make a lot more use out of the electric guitar if I restrict myself. The problem is that I have this fucking annoying ground loop from the amp. I stole Luke's amp because my Fender amp had the same buzz, but the Vox amp is having the same problem. I need to get on fixing that quickly. 6 songs. Jebus Christ.

Shit, forgot how difficult recording is. I'm not a very clean acoustic player, and a lot of the defining tracks on my songs are acoustic tracks. There's this weird buzzing coming from my guitar. The strumming is awful and messy. I'm so exposed. I've yet to figure out how to produce my songs. I'm not sure which tracks to make louder than others or how loud I show make them, etc. But Luke can help me with that kind of stuff. Today's recording session was a nice slap to face. When you're stoked on a project, you always envision it coming out perfectly like a record that was produced in a professional studio or a film that is really smooth and nice. I forgot how rough or rather, how Garageband-y, my songs sound. I also forgot how long it takes to put together a song. I spent close to an hour setting up and getting a decent acoustic track, which I'm going to throw out and re-do anyways. It's okay, though. I haven't lost hope. I'm  way too excited to finish this thing to pussy out now.

I've begun mapping out ideas for my film project. I was stuck for a bit, and I just spent time playing around with ideas and seeing where they went, but at one point during the night, I figured out what I want to do! All this time I just needed an idea to start with, a stepping stone. I had all these secondary ideas, but no start. Luke gave me this documentary to watch called Tarnation, which was a real trip. It's all collection of footage on handycams and Super 8 film. It's about a man who shows his childhood and how he grew up, while highlighting how the life of his mother, who is mentally insane, affected his. I'm basically ripping off Tarnation almost entirely. It's another work on parents, but this time it's both, not just my mother. I have tapes of old footage of me as a baby and a kid, and my parents when they were a lot younger. I want to show three parts of the film with old and new footage of each member of my family: one would be a part for my Dad, another would be for my Mom, and another would be for me. Maybe I'll include my brother. At first, I was uneasy about copying Tarnation so blatantly, but something feels so right about this, like I've always wanted to do it and for that reason I don't feel any guilt at all from ripping off Tarnation. I'm even stealing this one part at the end where the guy talks into the camera while in the bathroom, except mine will be a message to my parents. If I actually follow through with this, this project will be the most personal piece of art that I've ever done. It'll be a real emotional trip, for sure. Sometimes I like to talk to myself as if I'm talking to my parents and halfway I break down in tears. I think I'm being brave by confronting the issue so directly, in addition to the fact that I'm going to have to show this to others. When the idea hit me, it felt so appropriate, like I've been waiting for this moment to address this conflict I have with my parents. Even now, it's surreal. I can't believe I'm actually thinking about going through with it, but what the hell. On another note, the drive for this piece is mainly the soundtrack. I have a bunch of songs that I love and that I know my parents loved when they were young'uns, stuff like Dancing Queen, Chicago, or Elton John. A lot of my influence for this film comes from the movie Once, which was also shot completely on a handycam. There's something gorgeous about a scene with documentary footage and a beautiful song playing in the background.

http://en.vidivodo.com/video/lies-once-ost/230617

That's the scene from Once that I want to replicate. There's this other scene where it's one shot following a girl while she sings this love song. It's great. I've yet to see La Jetee yet, but I read up on it on Wikipedia. The concept of using narration over still photos is rad. I might even watch it right now. 

I just keep throwing days away. I haven't done anything this weekend, except maybe think about stuff a bit. Since April, I've been really good at shitting my time away. I hardly do homework anymore. I just sit in front of the computer and kind of wait for something to make me do something. When I'm at work or outside of the house, I'm always antsy to get home so I can do art, but when I get here, I really don't do anything. My god, I haven't even finished my last song yet. The problem is that I'm thinking of adding two more songs. Something about the album isn't complete yet, which isn't a surprise because I haven't worked on it in so long.

I'm a lot more deliberate when I write now. I've gotten better, and I've stopped excusing myself when I wrote some shitty filler lines. I'm trying to be more efficient with how I write, which I've noticed as I was working on my most recent song. The best lyrics are the ones that are short and sweet, but leave you with the right picture in mind. You can capture a lot of emotion and vibe with only a few words. A good example is the first line of Radiohead's Blackstar, which goes:
"I get home from work and you're still standing in your dressing gown well what am I to do?"
Whenever I hear that line, the same image pops into my head: a husband walking in late at night to his shitty apartment with the T.V. on and his wife with her hair in curlers standing with her arms crossed and the bitchiest stare. It also reminds me of this picture I got off the Joker's wikipedia page: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Jokerorig.png.

I've got to start recording soon. I'm doing film as my side salad and for my Quest project. It's gonna be a short movie or documentary. I know that so far, but I'm stuck on an idea. I spent time during my AP physics test to write down all the ideas I have for the film. They're all little bits from movies that inspire me and I want to use. Songs give me a lot of ideas for film as well. I remember I used to think about movie ideas in my head when I was in middle school, and the way I'd keep track of the plot was through the soundtrack I'd arranged. I haven't given up any enthusiasm on the EP, even though I'm stoked for the film thing too. I wanted to do something with photography, too, but maybe I'll save that for the summer.