This is how I go forward with my music - the real story from November 2017 and towards the album release but it took Volume 2 to get the whole way there. Creating, editing and mixing music is a complicated effort but loads of fun.
For all you who wa...
Some days you just want to quit. In fact, an ambitious indie musician on the rise will often feel like quitting. You have great music in your head and making it great takes time and money. You know that people want to hear your music, but that most won't pay for it. You are not done with your album yet and you are deathly afraid of releasing crap, so you hover over it too long, tweaking everything so it takes forever to get that first album released. Your fans become impatient at first and then most of them end up giving up on you and forgetting that you ever had an thing going. And by the time you get done those same people have already moved on to some other artist and you've lost them maybe forever. But there are a few superfans that just won't let up, thank God!
Superfans
I am not Drake, Ed Sheraton or Taylor Swift with tons of fans. I am just a little unknown me. I have a tiny, but beautiful following. I love those few who have stuck it out with me these three years, love my music and still believe in it. I call them "super-friends". They still encourage me and they still like my posts. They often share my posts and comment them in positive ways. They are a few in number, but without them I would pack up my bags and call it a day and get a day job. ANY day job would do. But I don't want to let them down. It's people like them that make me keep going. My husband, my siblings in the states, a woman in Scotland, a few families I hang out with on Mondays in our local home church group, a couple in Minnesota and a few individuals in the U.K. and Canada. It's a widely dispersed bunch united by Facebook, Messenger and Skype.
When I have a bad day, I have to say to my feelings, "Shut up and think about those super-friends!" and then I go and do the mixing anyway, despite my feelings. Today is the first day that really feels like Spring so I am going to begin to eat right and train again. I have to. I owe it to them and I'll feel better if I do. I owe it to my super-friends!
I believe a lot of this sadness that has been hanging like an intermittent cloud over me is not that I live out in the boonies, or that I don't know when I ever will get done with this first album, although those are factors. I think the greatest problem is not living in the balance.
It is in times like these that my super-friends hold me up. They don't know it but, for me, just knowing that they are there is amazingly helpful.
So, I am going to sit down and do the mixing - after I update Wattpad and I am going to incorporate planning and exercise into my days.
As an independent artist it is you own responsibility to keep a balance so you keep the depression clouds away. You need to set blocks of time for practice, promotion, music production, exercise, spiritual enrichment and fun/inspiration. You owe it to yourself and too your super-friends.
After I wrote this I went out to our outdoor gym and worked out. Then I took care of the wash. Oh the exciting life of an indie music producer! Now it's back to the drawing board (i.e. mixing).
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Mixing
Because I redid the acoustic guitar (on the right side) yesterday, I have to edit it today. I can hear from the recording that I need to set up noise traps because there is some kind of strange frequency that came after I remodelled the studio. oops-
Mastering
I read this second step from Ian Shepherd. I am continuing to learn mastering as I go because I can't afford to let other people do it after this first album.
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