Blogs » Musings On Muses » If I Had The Time

Subscribe


 
If I Had The Time
By joseexist in Musings On Muses
May 15, 2010

If I had the time I would not be a vocalist, ever. Since I rarely have the time I need to get things done the way I really want to I end up with things ‘done’ instead of ‘done well’. I think my voice is why every aquarium we’ve ever had ended up with floating fish all belly-up. Collaborating, on the other hand, is a useful tool that maintains my ability to work with others. That ability never dies as long as its muscles are flexed from time to time. There again, time is the resource that never reaches the rim of my cup.

When I got my first cassette recorder I was extremely embarrassed to hear my own voice for the first time. I could recognize other people on playbacks but I sounded alien to myself. All these years later I still feel the fingernails on the black-board. Nothing short of thoracic and maybe even nasal surgery can fix the voice I have.

Since about 2004 I have been recording my own original music. (I know, ‘so what’.) Before that I spent a few years without touching or even thinking about a guitar. The band I had in high school was dispersed and all the practicing we used to do was over. No ideas ever wafted thru my mind except for an occasional lyric. My ‘loudest stack in the world’ rig sat gathering dust. My trusty old Gibson lay quiet and dormant in its case. This ‘hibernation’, as it was, turned out to be an exile from music that I had allowed to happen. Looking back I can see every wrong turn I ever made. There are far too many to mention here though.

One day I awoke from the fog I had settled into and rolled that old stack out into an almost empty living room. I released the latches on the coffin wherein lay my tool of favor. I plugged in, turned on, and began the slow climb back into the dream-world of music. Many old tunes where still there in my fingers but I soon discovered that many new things wanted out as well. The chapter of my life that I had just barely survived needed a way out of the dark detritus of my psyche.

I don’t know where in the brain new music is created, nor do I much care to know. What I do know is that I have the overwhelming notion that my mind was still composing music somewhere deep inside my subconscious even as I let my talent languish. I was just a guitar player who dabbled a bit on a keyboard from time to time. Now I was beginning to think in terms of full compositions. Drums, Bass guitar, Piano, Synthesizers, Vocals and groups of Vocals were all clambering for attention in my mind. The problem was getting them out and forging them into music.

One lesson soon learned the hard way was that everything you ever record needs to be saved in as much detail as possible. My very first batches of songs are preserved in wav files but the individual track information for each song was deleted after I ripped the wave files of the completed tunes to my had-drive. In any case I can always go back and re-record everything. It might even sound better. My voice on the other hand will take far more than a miracle to sound better. (Please feel free to laugh out loud.)