RPM 2009 - Days 3-5

I'm in a familiar state - I am saying "Wow, this is all awful. Maybe I won't finish. Maybe I won't release it."

I've been unusually tired. Getting up at 6 every day isn't helping, and it's made the idea of staying up late to finish anything a non-starter.

I'm still going over the chorus for "Resigned" - Not sure if the melody is good, not sure if the lyrics are good. I'm going to commit this weekend, no matter what. Or at least get it to a point where I can stop thinking about it. I just want to stop looping it in my head and trying new things. I sort of felt this way about "Daemons" last year and that ended up being one of my favorite tracks.

I've also been doing a little work on the second track, which is tentatively called "The Signal". I wrote some lyrics - enough to sketch out the idea and point in a direction to finish the track.

I've got a bit of guitar down and a beat. I've started experimenting with what David Torn calls "cell guitar", where I'm chopping up bits of parts and/or repeating sections. It's started to sound a little more interesting and I think is a good direction to explore for a few tracks.

That experiment has helped me sketch out a kind of spectrum for the record, where at one end is semi-straight-ahead stuff like The Church and the other end is Fennesz and David Sylvian. If I can have songs all across this spectrum, I think I'll have something interesting.

If nothing else, Air King Sound likes the beats I'm making, which is good news. The Konkrete drums are very different from what I've used in the past. Of course, my initial reaction is to be concerned that it doesn't sound "right", but then I tell myself my objective is to do something different anyhow.

Day 5 brought some much-needed rain to the Bay Area. Work and appointments kept me busy enough that I couldn't go to the gym. By the time I got home I was extremely tired and just listened to the tracks a few times before leaving for a friend's send-off party (6 months in China).

On the way home I started getting a new song idea. Wrote down some words and sang a melody.

My objective for the coming weekend is to finish these first 2 tracks and at least start on a third. Failing that, I'll start a bunch of new ideas (3 at least) and finish them up over the next few weeks.

I forget how hard this can be.