Ten years ago, I still dreamed of being a rock star. I was playing guitar for a Birmingham-based indie band, and we were in the process of recording a demo CD. It was a very exciting time.
Fast forward five years, and I was barely playing music at all. I hardly ever picked up my guitar, and while I once had been writing virtually a song a week at university (they weren’t great songs, but that’s not the point), I was experiencing a long fallow period.
In addition, I was struggling to get used to the recording software I was using. It all seemed to complicated, compared to my trusty technique of using two tape cassette recorders to create multi-track demos of the song ideas I was coming up with.
And then, on one of the social media platforms I’m a member of, someone alerted me to the Wikipedia album game. The premise was simple; you navigated to the Wikipedia homepage, pressed the ‘random article’ button 13 times, and this gave you your album title and a dozen track titles. At a loose end, as I regularly am, I dutifully did as instructed, and then a thought occurred to me: why don’t I actually record the album?
My thought process was thus; if I kept the songs simple, and avoided instruments that were difficult to record, such as electric guitar, bass and drums, and I came up with songs quickly and instinctively, like Paul McCartney did with his Flaming Pie album, I could have the album recorded in double time. Lyrics, arrangements, recordings; all should be done promptly, without getting bogged down in thinking too much. I should keep things fresh.
That was four years ago…needless to say life got in the way a little. But I now have a decent recording set up, and the band I’m a part of ebbs and flows a little, so I’m ready to embark on the process of getting these songs finished and into the world. I don’t have set rules as such, but I am following the ethos of mainly using acoustic instruments, while I grow more experienced at engineering and mixing, but that’s not to say a full band sound is completely verboten. I should improve enough to give it a go.
I will be creating a bespoke illustration for each song. I’ve long neglected my drawing and painting skills (a ‘D’ in A Level art, I’ll have you know.) I’ve felt somewhat guilty about that, so it’s a good excuse to blow the dust off my art materials. With practise, the illustrations should improve as well.
So that’s it. Without any further ado, I present the first track from ‘Nuevo Leon State Highway 1 Spur’, Sixth Street Historic District. I hope you enjoy it.
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