Never been one to let the carrier drop

I’ve still been chipping away at my keyboard and guitar skills. I hope to record some more original material soon, and also to maybe do a twitch show soon.

1200 hours

So, I’ve made it to 1100. Still getting better, although there are interesting phenomenons where some aspects get worse and then better as parts of my neural network rebalance. Anyway, looking forward to seeing what I’m like at 2000.

So, sometime early in COVID I installed a hour meter.. I’m not sure exactly when, but it hit 200 hours in Oct of 2020. Anyway, I always said I’d do a twitch show when it hit 1000 hours, and so here it is

1000_hours_Sheer_twitch_show.mp4

So, I know that it’s fairly common for people to not be able to decode and enjoy the level of music that I can. I can handle many more layers than most people can, and I want my music to *have* many more layers than most people want.

I also know that on Bruce’s album, I’m essentially a studio musician albeit a unpaid one and thusly I shouldn’t complain when I get edited out.

However, it was quite a jolt to have *my favorite part* of the whole album removed. Along with all my keyboards on two different tracks, and about 50% of them overall.

(Anyone who is curious, in Falling Down Hard, during the bridge, there was this lovely descending series of arpeggios that come in with the second of four passes that never failed to delight me)

I know part of the issue here is just that I like things too complex.. apparently too complex for Joe, and definitely too complex for Bruce. I did get permission from Bruce to release the track uncut after the album has come out. My guess is most people will prefer Joe’s mix to mine, but I want to be able to share what I think is one of my most brilliant moments with my friends.

There’s a bunch of things I’d do differently.. maybe I’ll see if I can just release the entire album mixed to my tastes. Probably only ten people will ever listen to it, but I know which version I’d rather hear.

So, since I added a hour meter – I don’t actually remember what date that happened but it was somewhat after I started practicing a hour or more a day during COVID – I have done 900 hours.

I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate when I get to 1000.

So, I’m in the studio this weekend tracking parts for a friend’s concept album – except I’m actually not. What I’m actually doing is providing scratch tracks to allow him to get the timing right, over which we will track better parts later. Which is fine with me. I was running into a weird ego thing where the AE is keeping my parts faded way down – which makes perfect sense, after all mistakes in them don’t even matter – but there was part of me that kept trying to convince me it was because of how much my vocals suck, which may also be a true criticism but I’m pretty sure is not why he’s doing it.

I think I’m on record before as saying that to be a really great musician you have to be able to not let your ego get in the way of the music. THis is definitely one of those moments – I mean, it’s a honor to be considered as a session musician and this is where I want to go and it has been a lot of fun. I’ll go back and track “real” parts with the guitars – for the drums and vocals we’re tracking at Orbit Audio because they have better mics and a better sounding room than I even want to try to have, then for all the line-in type stuff we’re tracking at Sheer Sound (my basement setup, which is still more advanced than most high end studios were in the 90s)

Anyway, I really hope we can get this album shipped without the band falling apart or the originator losing interest. It’s very prog rock and a nice change from my ordinary fare.

So, I’ve unlocked another important achievement on the way to being a professional musician – I’ve got my first rejection letter!

This is important – we all know that Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and the Who all received rejection letters, just to name a few of my musical heros. Therefore clearly if I’m getting rejection letters I’m doing something right. (I’m only being somewhat facetious here – immediate acceptance would mean that my music is the same as the current stuff on the radio which I do not think would be very much of a success for where I want to go and what I want to do)

So, I still have to keep working on finding my audience. But.. another step along the way is done.