Win, Lose, or Draw?

February is over. It’s March 3 and the nagging feeling that I’m supposed to be in the studio working whenever there’s a hint of free time is starting to dissipate. This also means that all of the things I put on hold for a month – yard work, tax prep, running ethernet, building that server – no longer have a valid procrastination excuse.

In general, I think I had a decent and solid month. It was decidedly a month in two-parts, though. The first half was very nearly all songs and largely energetic if not upbeat and positive. That was a surprise given my mood going into the journey; I had expected a lot more introspection. I think a large part of it was using my Random Finds playlist¹Discussed in February but briefly: I have a shortcut on my phone that identifies music I’m hearing and adds it to an Apple Music playlist. Anytime I hear something (in a movie or show, a store, or even just when I have some streaming station on) that I think is fun, cool, interesting, or weird enough that I want to hear it again, I run this shortcut. The resulting playlist is an algorithm-breaking mish-mash of eclecticism. to get inspiration or production challenges. I wasn’t just picking the first thing that played, though. I normally shuffled through until I heard something that inspired me in some way.

My understanding of the old adage that if you want to sound like your favorite artist, don’t listen to their music, listen to the music they listened to was reinforced. Nothing I posted really sounds like what I was either trying to copy or inspired by, but if I played them both in sequence, you’d probably hear the influence or relationship.

Starting on the fifteenth, I became decidedly more sombre and instrumental. Still good, just coming from a radically different place. I was tired, worn down by the world and the incessant din of political screeching from all quarters. I only wrote four songs with lyrics in the last two weeks, and one of those was sung by a robot.

Why the sudden shift? After the initial burst of energetic output, and a lack of significant feedback about most of them except from a couple of regular listeners, I think I re-embraced the idea that the entire point of this month is to write for myself. I seemed to have more trouble getting started each day, but that desperation made me more inclined to follow any promising lead, which resulted in some cool things.

Winners and Losers

Of course there are no winners and losers as far as the point of all this goes. I wrote every day. Win. Period. There are some obvious highs and lows, though.

Guidelines, Not Rules

I gave myself a couple of loose guidelines for the month: simplify, write from other perspectives, etc., but none were hard mandates like I’ve done in the pa. I continued tendency to do different genres every day, but that’s not an intentional thing. I write whatever shows up on that particular day. Having soft-constraints helped me narrow my focus without making me feel trapped. Winner.

Try For More Songs

One of my guidelines was to really try and write more songs with lyrics. The primary benefit I’ve gotten from Song-A-Day over the last eleven (!) years is learning that, yes, I’m capable of writing new music every day for an extended period. Songs²I’m defining a song as anything where I’ve written lyrics, normally with a melody, but not necessarily. The main thing is that there are lyrics that someone or something will be singing/saying over music. are still a mental hurdle of sorts, though I’m less scared of them now.

As it did with producing a lot of music, Song-A-Day has helped me relax about lyrics, especially my perfectionist desire to have my lyrics be poetry. Great songs aren’t necessarily poetry,³In fact, many aren’t. Maybe most. It’s always wonderful when the lyrics are poetry and the entire thing is elevated, and maybe I was overly spoiled by early listening to Neil Peart’s lyrics. but I’m super critical of my own songs when they’re not. My goal this year was to not let laziness, fear, or imperfection keep me from at least trying to write a song if I had even the least bit of an idea. They weren’t all great, but I did a lot better – just one song short of tying my 2019 record for number of songs. Winner.

Need for External Recognition

There might be a few people on the planet immune to this, but I am not one of them. Applause is a terribly addictive thing. Once you get some, you start questioning everything when you post something and get none. This is counterproductive to the exercise. Worse, I’d often catch myself making creative decisions based on whether or not I thought other people would like it. That’s the path to madness and I need to stop. Loser.

Too Much Production

My internal interpretation of the “simplify” goal was that I’d limit myself to just piano, maybe simple drum, bass, and vocals with no additional production work. I obviously failed at this, but a big part of what I get out of the month is the production practice. It’s the finished product I’m after and, in many cases, the production is the song.⁴The Face of Adversity, for example, would not be at all enjoyable if it was just me and a piano. It would be funny, but probably not enjoyable. I can’t really ding myself too much on this because I got better and learned some things, but I also didn’t really simplify all that much. Draw.

Use of AI

No, I didn’t use any generative AI in my music. I used it for generating a few of the featured images for the blog. This was a huge productivity boost and convenience. In past years, I’ve spent way too much time searching the web for an image that conveys what I’m trying to express and is either public domain or has an appropriate use license. That’s way harder than it seems since I think my site would technically qualify as a commercial use. This ends up being a poor use of time, because they’re just eye candy and don’t really have much substantive value.

This year, I told DALL-E or Grok exactly what I had in my head and they happily made appropriate images. The one that I struggled a bit with was for The Crossing, not because it wasn’t appropriate or what I asked for, but because it was so evocative that I thought it might be too influential on the interpretation of the piece. The full size one was gorgeous, though, so I include it here for your enjoyment.

I continue to be optimistic about how AI will eventually become something that lifts humanity, though we’re in for the some rough times as we go through this revolution, just as we did in past ones. My position remains that I don’t trust current AI to do things correctly without supervision, but if you have domain knowledge of what you’re using it for, it’s amazing.  Winner.

Studio Organization

My procrastination cost me a “nice” studio this year – it’s still a wreck, and I’ve been putting things off because I wanted to run ethernet first. I’ve definitely reached the point where I’m sick of the mess, though, so I’ll be working on the studio over the next few months. I only used hardware synths on two tracks, largely because of the difficulty of reaching them. That’s going to be a metric for next year.  My goal is to get to the point where it’s both functional and pretty, but right now, it’s like a really bad storage closet.  Loser.

Deeper Use of Tools

I’m on a year-long moratorium on purchasing (most) new software and hardware. While new tools and toys are inspirational, the harsh reality is that nobody’s currently buying my stuff and I need to spend money on changing that instead of getting another compressor or synth. Years ago I decided to focus on becoming really good with one DAW instead of mediocre at a bunch of them. This year, I’m applying the same idea and have already seen improvement. Winner.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Ducklings

I hesitate to rank anything, but it is useful to document how I felt about things when they were fresh. I’ve learned to not be quite so down on a track immediately after writing it because I now know I’m probably wrong. I want to stress that these are just my feelings about these things on this day. I see the value in the ones I think could be better, and the flaws in the ones I think are pretty good.

The “Surprise Hits” column is there for those things that I thought wouldn’t appeal to anyone or weren’t that good, but that generated positive reactions. In fact, Both The Face of Adversity and Malfunctioning Lullaby earned “My new favorite song you’ve ever done” awards from my brother, Eric. These are only the third and fourth times he’s ever said that, and it’s the first time it’s happened twice in the same year.

Also, just because I didn’t list something up there doesn’t mean I like or dislike it. Climbing Crow Hill and Invisibles are solid.  I guarantee that I’ll be listening to Stet, Segmentation Fault and Nimble Hearsay a lot over the next year. With the possible exception of Can’t You Pay Attention to Alice?, I don’t think anything was “not good,” and even Alice has value and is fixable.

Above all, no matter how I feel about things right now, I am very pleased that I wrote them all. As the saying goes, “If you had fun, you won.” Now I’m not sure I’d call the experience with some of them “fun,” but each provided some form of reward, so: Winners!

Winner!

So, more winners than losers. The real losers are pieces of software that disappointed me or were too frustrating to use and that I’ll be removing from my standard template and never updating again. I also didn’t use a couple of things that I had planned on, so I’ll have to do those experiments as the year goes on. That ties in with my desire to write a lot more outside of February, though, so… accidental winner.

Metrics, Statistics, and Other Miscellanea

My total track count on the official site is now 279. I think I posted a pre- and post-effects version of Jigsawz in 2021, but I personally only count it as one track. If I participate again next year (more on that below), I should break 300. Here are the statistics for all eleven years:

So a new record for total tracks with 30! I did two covers and had one “sort-of” extra bonus track⁵The Critic but because I did actually do some production on it, I’m counting it. It’s always interesting how the numbers tell a different story than what I thought was going on. I thought I was writing longer things and, with 30 tracks, that this would be among the highest total amount of time written in a month.

I’m not really sure how indicative my site stats are, because I think most people listen on the official site. However, I was surprised to see 33 discrete listeners. Over the years, the number of people listening on my site has grown, so that’s good, but I don’t think this info is overly valuable for Song-A-Day, so I probably won’t worry about it in the future.

Part of my previously mentioned moratorium is a realization I had during the holidays that I should divert all the money I was spending on new stuff to marketing and advertising. This is an area where AI has been incredibly helpful to me. I’ll still be watching my various metrics, but the focus is going to be on growing an audience and, ideally, increasing actual sales. I’ll be releasing a few albums this year, and a lot of that content will be coming from Song-A-Day work.

Is This the End?

Last year, I had a few moments where I thought that maybe this life-changing and positive endeavor had run its course. I wasn’t really feeling all that challenged or rewarded from the effort. What keeps changing my mind is that after a little space and time, I’m often impressed by what I did, even to the point of hearing some things and thinking, “that couldn’t have been me that made that – I wouldn’t know how to do it!” Also, a lot of tracks that end up being favorites would probably have been abandoned if I didn’t have to post something. There’s massive value in being forced past my friction point. 

Lately, I’ve had the itch to go back to the corporate world and try to make things better wherever I can, so I’m starting to look for a new corporate gig. If you know anyone who needs a well-educated, lateral thinking, iconoclastic problem solver, please put me in touch! Getting a new “day job,” however, would mean a reduced focus on Song-A-Day. I don’t think I’ll stop participating entirely, but this may have been my last “maximum effort every day” year. I guess it will really depend on what’s going on with the rest of my life in eleven months.

If you’re still with me, thanks for reading! I welcome and encourage comments, feedback, questions, glowing praise and adoration. Constructive criticism is also welcome, I guess.⁶😉

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Notes

• 1
  Discussed in February but briefly: I have a shortcut on my phone that identifies music I’m hearing and adds it to an Apple Music playlist. Anytime I hear something (in a movie or show, a store, or even just when I have some streaming station on) that I think is fun, cool, interesting, or weird enough that I want to hear it again, I run this shortcut. The resulting playlist is an algorithm-breaking mish-mash of eclecticism.
• 2
  I’m defining a song as anything where I’ve written lyrics, normally with a melody, but not necessarily. The main thing is that there are lyrics that someone or something will be singing/saying over music.
• 3
  In fact, many aren’t. Maybe most. It’s always wonderful when the lyrics are poetry and the entire thing is elevated, and maybe I was overly spoiled by early listening to Neil Peart’s lyrics.
• 4
  The Face of Adversity, for example, would not be at all enjoyable if it was just me and a piano. It would be funny, but probably not enjoyable.
• 5
  The Critic
• 6
  😉