Nowadays music streaming services are so easily accessible through our devices and we can basically find anything we like. Musicians can with a few steps and means reach millions of people without depending on all the factors I mentioned earlier. If you have a computer, some recording equipment, editing skills (or ask a friend) you can soon have your music online for basically no cost at all. I find this to be a very interesting time in our history.
However, what I also find to be very interesting is the journey from when you decide to take on a project, like recording an album, until you consider it to be finished. What comes up in your mind? "This is impossible. I will never be able to do this. I don't even know how to write a song. How do I play this instrument? No one will like it. I have no artistic inspiration at all. Bad hair day, yep. The coffee is bad..." There may be endless comments going on.. Or not?
One day on a cold mid-November, I gave myself a challenge: to compose and record a guitar album within a week; Publish it online and serve family, friends and community with my passion. I told a social media community that this was my goal and that I would report after a week.
I wanted to use simple and efficient recording techniques (that I had been taught from my sound teacher) because that was part of my project: in a simple way, craft a homemade recording and reach out globally with my music.
To record a CD was something I had wanted to do for a long time but it never really kicked it off with this project. I now simply got started. I got down to work. It was what it was and it wasn’t hard work. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes not. Sometimes the inspiration was flowing, and other times I felt stuck. However, through all the time I relaxed with whatever came up. I thought of people who had gone before me, my teachers and inspirations. How would they have done it? What would their approach be? What challenges came up for them?
At the end of that week, I reported back to the social media community that my album was done. I completed nine tracks and was very happy about that. The name I gave the album was “A Life of Beauty” because that is what I think my life is like: a life of beauty.