Since I’ve been learning to play guitar, I have been promising everyone and their mothers dog that I was going to drag out my old lyric books and start recording some songs.
I’ve been promising that for well over a year to my band-mates in both Acoustic Highway and Jim in Taylor Martin.. And to myself.
Well, last night, I finally took a step toward making that happen. For the first time ever, I went through my old lyrics – we’re talking some 33 years worth (wrote my first song when I was 13) – and marked the ones that have good lyric and at least a song structure to lay down as songs!
I’ve been promising I was going to do this for a very long time, but never committed myself to actually do it. I think I now know why. There are hundreds of pages of total crap, stuff I would be totally embarrassed to show the world… That this…. drivel… actually came out of my brain. Reading some of that, it’s discouraging and makes it hard to think about myself as a song writer. I exposed a little bit of wretched stuff
in this blog post. Most of the scribblings are just bad. I think I have have long avoided going through my collection of lyrics because I was avoiding those failures. And their are so many of them, it’s overwhelming. Who wants to stare their ineptness in the face!
But then, I come across a gem, a diamond in the rough, and think, hey, maybe I’ve done some good stuff… And, as it turns out, I have! The ratio of bad vs good isn’t great… Hell, it’s pretty atrocious! Still, now that I’ve marked the good stuff, it turns out I have more in there than I ever realized, at least 32 potential songs that, if someone else were to record them, I would be proud to say “Hey! I wrote that!”
A second thing that has held me back is my recording equipment. When I record this stuff, I have “a sound” that I want it to sound like… Uber-Professional! Well, between the limitations of budget – the equipment is good, but not professional grade – and my Black Cap Lotikeet squawking in the background…. That just ain’t gonna happen!
Third concern is my own musicianship and lack of competence / confidence. After 25 year, I pretty much have the bass thing down alright and that’s not a problem. I’m getting better on guitar, but I have a long way to go before I’m a guitarist. And again, I hear things in my head that I just don’t know how to physically produce on the six stringed instrument. Oh… And I pretty much hate the sound of my own voice! This is where my brothers will chime in and say they hate the sound of my voice too!!!
But I need to forge ahead anyway. I owe it to myself to do this. Plus, like everything else, the more songs I record and lay down, the better I’m going to get at all that.
In the mean time… Have to go work so I can pay the electric bill so I’ll have juice to run my computer and electronic music recording gadgets!
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