Why / Not

The thought occurred to me last night that I honestly don't know why I'm in college.

Yes, I know that everyone goes through this small identity crisis, and that "a year from now, you'll finally know what you want to major in," blah blah blah. And yes, I know I've probably plagued this blog countless times with my quips about a lack of direction in University.  But the completion of this thought has never really hit me until last night as I was getting my back pack ready for the next day. I finally experienced the sense of a complete and total question mark weighing heavy on my shoulders.

Tomorrow, I was to get up from bed early in the morning and walk to a school that I don't necessarily hate or love passionately and listen to Knowledge being spoken to me in voices that sometimes don't even carry past the sound of the air conditioning.

(The voice of Knowledge has also turned out to be a bit quirky this semester as well, in regards to my Philosophy Professor who is a bit hard of hearing, and speaks in the voice of a wizened and not so animated Daffy Duck).

And maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not really sure if I love anything in college. But that's me talking Today. Tomorrow I might sincerely love a Subject, or a Teacher, or the feeling of walking to and from classes. Who knows...

All this to say, I certainly don't hate college.

So as it turns out, the reason for me being in college is not the "Why should I be in college?" but the "Why not?" Not any sort of love for any certain subject, but simply because I don't necessarily hate anything in the makeup of college at all.

On top of all of this love and hate is my love for something quite outside of college in general: Music. And it turns out I'm in a pretty good place with all of that-- I just recorded and Ep, it'll be released soon. I'm looking to put together a band with my friend Ben, and we're looking to start playing shows. This love is going somewhere, while college feels as stagnant as any Sophomore would have it feel.

It's an odd jumble, isn't it?

I've come to accept that there probably is no solution to this problem. To graduate seems inevitable, not because of any sort of huge desire to do so, but because I'm just driven by another "Why not?"

After reading all of this, I've realized that perhaps that's a poor way to live. I'm just confused by a conflict of desires and my incredible aptitude for indecision.
We'll see how this semester goes.

Here's to the "Why nots!"

All Moved In

I moved into my new room this week. It's a renovated home from the 1940s. I wonder what kind of people lived here way back when.
I'm sure it'll get my share of living in it as long as I'm here. Yet I'm mostly intimidated by it.  I'll go shopping later this week for old book cases and paintings and lamps.

I could write a novel in this room.

My thoughts right now are rather disjointed and jumbled up, mostly because that's how I feel in all aspects of my life. Journeying from Desert-y Tucson to Green, green Bowling Green is a change that I don't think anyone could go through unaffected.

My room has three windows, with big metal blinds, meaning I can have lots of sunlight when I want, or none at all.

Right now they're up all the way. I love the sunshine.

University begins on Monday, and I've yet to buy all my textbooks.
Thanks for reading.

.... Conclusion

It's nine o'clock in the morning and I feel groggy and nasty.

Aaaaaaand, the most accomplished that I've ever felt in my entire life.
 The songs are finished, as far as I'm concerned with them. I've put two years into preparing for them, writing them, rewriting them, loving them, hating them, loving them even more, and then recording them. Now it's all finished, and at 12:10 this morning I fly back to some town so that I can start college (I just did something impulsive and registered for a tap dance class).

I think what is both most upsetting and peaceful (in a way) for me is the fact that I'm not going to listen to these songs again until the producer is finished mixing and mastering them (a process which amounts to about two to four weeks).
Though this wasn't my original idea, and am sort of being forced to do this, I think it will be good for me. The final step is stepping back. (Ironic).  I'm putting it into the hands of someone I trust musically, and I no longer have control over it any more.

I might go a bit crazy.
All this to say, I need to wake my chauffeur (also my producer, landlord, and close friend)  up so that I don't miss my flight. That would be soooooooo tragic......

Thanks to everyone who has been reading this. Your interest in what I'm doing has meant more to me than you know. I hope that in a couple weeks I might be able to give something back to you---- in the form of sexy tunes!

Isaac

Expectations

It's pretty much our last full day in Tucson.
Right now I'm sitting without a shirt (pants on, regrettably), my hair in a mess, on some couch, hearing the dog that I could never come to friendly terms with scratch at the door. And the cat has her head stuck in my cup of chocolate milk....

To say that I'm grateful for the time that I've had here would just be another understatement that I've been throwing out since I've arrived. I could never regret the time and the money and the energy that I've put into being here with two of my closest friends. I love that I've been here, to work with these guys for the common goal of creating music, to get fed up with each other over ideologies about how a certain part in the song should go, to apologize when my idea turns out to be the worse one. To try over and over and over again a certain guitar take until you get it just right, and your fingers feel like they might start bleeding. I've been given a taste of what I could be doing with the rest of my life, and I am in love with the situation.

All this to say, recording an Ep definitely isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Whenever I thought of recording an Ep, I always had in mind waking up in some comfortable bed, strolling over to the studio to get a cup of coffee on the way, arrive at some skyscraper building and say hello to some receptionist or something, who then assures me that "the producer is waiting for me in the studio with the hard wood floors." I would arrive in the studio to find everything already set up, the instruments tuned, so that all I had to do was walk up to a microphone and sing some perfect melody, and the rest would just work itself out.

So I wasn't really that naive, but you get the general idea.

In reality, at least for penniless musicians like ourselves, it goes something like this: "Wake up on the studio floor with your head on a pillow made of blankets to find the cat eating your face. On occasion, the producer Himself will turn on music for us and dance around with his signature Booty Dance. Find out that the gas is running low, so we must take quick showers. Begin the music making process, only to find that someone else is in the house napping, so we can't track drums at this certain hour of the day. (The studio is in a two bedroom house, consisting of the habitants of the Producer and his wife and myself and Ben). On occasion, Ben and I are to clean the bathroom and wash dishes. (Don't get me wrong. We're staying at this place for free, so it's the least we could do. But... I mean, cleaning the bathroom? haha.)

All this to say, this all turned out much different than I had expected. But I honestly do think that it's better this way. I'll always look back on these moments with the lingering thought of "that was crazy."

I leave tomorrow, and college will soon start afterwards.

Different Directions

One of my favorite musical artists of all time is Aaron Marsh, former lead singer for the band Copeland. Evan Van Kirk, (friend and producer) has been talking with him on the phone for a while, making plans to record an album with him in the near future.

Pretty much from what Evan's told me, Aaron Marsh doesn't listen to any of his own stuff, because he gets angry with himself in retrospect, thinking about all of the things he could have done differently in his songs, all the different directions he could've taken, all the sounds he could've used and didn't. I never really understood what he meant. When I wrote a song, that would be the way I wanted it to sound. A different direction sort of seemed impossible. I guess that's because I've never spent enough time really considering my songs.

All this to say, today I finally understand what he means.
For one of my songs (the first one on the album, actually), I had originally had in mind to take it in the direction of a big band song, rocky, four-man-band style, etc. Then while recording vocals, I found myself not feeling the song at all. It didn't even feel like it was mine. So that was when I realized that I could make this song sound completely different. And then I realized that there's probably a million different ways for a song to sound. It's actually really overwhelming.

Anyway, at the moment I'm compleeeeeetely stoked on this new sound. It's experimental and beautiful. Instead of opening with a bang, it's sort of like this whole album fades into existence, like a dream.

I might hate the idea tomorrow. But we're gonna think positive.

There's a cat on my lap.

Thoughts from Jeremy Larson

Right now I'm listening to the semi-finished product of three of our songs.
It's odd. Two years ago, I always felt like it would be impossible to write a song and not show it to anybody for an extended period of time. The day I recorded a song would be the day I published it. I wanted instant gratification for my day's worth of work. And then I was always confused that all I got was about a day's worth of gratification. Anyway, it's odd because now we've been working on these songs for about six months now and no one (except a select endeared few) have heard them.

Jeremy Larson (one of my biggest musical inspirations)  had a post on his blog about a month ago that went something like this: if the music that you make doesn't move you more than anybody else's music does, you're doing something wrong. I completely agree with him. At first, I always felt sheepish about my music. To say "man, my music moves me more than any other artist's) would be unheard of. I felt that that would be pretty arrogant to say. But honestly, it sometimes is the honest truth. And it should be. It's My music, my thoughts, my feelings. It's my understanding of myself put into music. If it doesn't move me, then something is definitely wrong.

All this to say, I just listened to our music, and can honestly say that at a lot of points I'm moved probably more than what most music does to me. I'm.... excited. I love our songs.

Guitar Tracks take a Looooooooooooong time

They really do.

The frustration of feeling the pressure to get it right, mixed with the knowledge that you're not exactly the best guitarist in the world, can surmount itself to be nearly impenetrable.

Yet we try nonetheless.

Taliea

I made an update video!

Pleeeease note, the music isn't mine. It's Yann Tiersen. I could never make sounds so lovely.
Anyway, hope you like it.

Go Listen to Pepper Rabbit

 Already after only two days of being here, I feel like such a better musician overall.

I feel like I'm in more of an intensive three week music-camp than anything else. I've never worked at music for such a long period of time before. It's stretched me a lot, in both a draining and a rejuvenating sort of way. We all feel more and more confident about the music each day.

As promised, here are some pictures of the studio:

We spent a lot of time last night recording piano demos. This thing sounds so good.

The sound booth is big enough to fit the drums in.  It's my favorite place in the whole house. 

Evan found a perfect drummer for us. Honestly, I could never have asked for better. Ryan (the drummer) has added more than I could ever have expected to these songs. Recording drums might be my favorite part, and I'm not even playing them. Haha.

Dry Heats

Living in Kentucky for a year makes one sort of forget that such a thing as Dry Heat is a possibility. I've missed the feeling so much. The sunshine is almost tangible here. I had to go out of my way to buy sun screen today.

I really need to be taking more pictures. I'll take the camera out tomorrow.
Today Ben and I sat down with our new drummer Ryan from 10 am to 2 pm to work on getting the songs laid out. We only touched two of them. Honestly, I'm more excited now than ever about these songs. Before, these songs were just things that a guy recorded in his room. Now, they're songs by a Band. They have that Band feeling. It's spectacular.
In recording, I don't want to loose everything unique about the Composition aspect that took over when I was writing songs, but I definitely want to add the feeling of a band into these songs. It sounds so much more alive.

Tomorrow will more or less turn out the same.

P.s. Martin strings sound sooooooo folky. I shall never go back to Elixers ever again.