Indeedes Music

     I am a perfectionist when it comes to music. so much so that I am often displeased with minor details in my work. this can hider my enjoyment of when listening back. I know that getting hung up on the small things can distract from the big picture, which is what's important. An example of this is on a  when I hear a few spots in my recent album where my vocals were a little rough, my throat tenses up. But when I take a step back and think, when I listen to Artists like Dave Matthews and Pavement I don't listen the imperfections, I listen to the music, for its imagery, its words, its feelings. Anne Lammot has a quote that effectively expresses the biggest downfalls of this attitude, "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft." letting small things hold you back will prevent the creative process from being a free flowing

Im proud to say that my band Passenger Pigeon finally recorded a full length album and released it on most platforms. we've been together around four years and have grown to be an incredibly tight crew of dudes. through the process of creating the album we learned many valuable lessons. the first is time management; we had tried recording several times before but since we had not created a mission statement we fell short and never followed anything to completion. a lesson that Anne Lammot teaches in Bird by Bird in the early chapters is, learn from your shitty first drafts; we had recorded a song called Ibn Battuta three times only to be discouraged by the end result. however each time was better than the last. we learned from the mistakes of these shitty drafts and finally recorded an excellent track. one of the most simple, yet profound lesson Kenny (bass and vocals) and I learned was patience. this was hard for us because as artists we were incredibly anxious to release our musi

plug-ins are pieces of  software that are used to process and manipulate audio tracks in a daw. a compressor is a popular example of a plug in. they set a decibel threshold to prevent level peaking and bring out quieter parts in the mix. knowing what they are and how to use them is a crucial part of being a recording musician. without plugins a mix can easily sound thin and weak. I learned this the hard way. my first EP was originally released with only a few reverb plugins. no serious mixing was done and as a result it sounded very unprofessional. I recently spent time learning about daws with my good buddy James McConnell and used the acquired information to remix the EP. The result was a much smoother and professional production. if you are at all interested in recording music do yourself a favor. learn from my mistake and learn about plugins before you start. if anyone is curious and wants to learn more just shoot me an email and I'd be happy to provide info and recommend some

I'm proud to announce that my LP Cup of collisions has been released. It's not perfect but I had an amazing time writing and recording it. each song holds a lot of meaning to me. but my work is not done, it never is. Releasing music is great but there is so much more to it than recording and releasing, promotion is an absolute necessity. promoting can be done with live shows, social media, and word of mouth. I cannot do live shows currently because I don't have a backing band, but social media and word of mouth are methods I can use. an enormous number of people use social media everyday. the goal is to reach the crowds, but doing so is not simple and by no means easy. Instagram is my personal preference, it is set up well for musicians and artist. with an image based interface it is important to create aesthetically intriguing posts regularly to keep your audience engaged. for this LP I posted frequently in the days leading up to the release and it paid off. the drop rec

Over this last summer I recorded an LP. As I listen to the finalized mixes I am a little frustrated with my performance, especially with vocals. It sucks to look back and realize that there is no way to fix it. Fortunately my producer Jame McConnell is a beast and is doing his best to fix some of my sloppiness. I know now that I was singing without my diaphragm and have since learned to do so. It has dis-heartened me but at the end of the day I'm proud of the music I produced, despite it's imperfections. It is a snapshot of where I was as a musician the summer of 2018, and if you look past some of the mistakes I believe it is a fun collection of unique songs that at the very least will be an interesting listen. Like Anne Lammot says, you might think something is perfect at the time only to realize later that it could've used more work, but perfection is impossible and as long as you're happy with what you've written, then it is great.

the most important part of recording music is getting good takes with instruments and vocals. getting good recordings is the first and highest priority in the recording process. Once good takes are made you want to begin mixing. to mix you apply plugins such as compression, reverb, panning and so on. it is a good idea to listen to music you like, that would be a good example for your mix. I tend to listen to Dave Matthews band for this purpose. last night while listening I came up with some notes that I later applied to a song im working on called Aesthetic. I Equalized the alternating down beat shaker (used as a snare) to the root note of the key the song is in. a minor touch but I think it adds a lot to the mix. I also noticed how Dave's vocals cut through the layer heavy song; there was minimal reverb and decay, so I rolled down both of these parameters which yeilded positive results. It is like Anne Lammot referencing authors she enjoyed, especially her father, you want to read