CONTENTS:
Volume 1 – The History and Birth of a Mockumentary – Volume 3 – Writing Songs About Chocolate Milk
Can’t start this part without some sort of preface or anything to kind of get into the context of things. Think of me as Luke Skywalker for a second. Now, scale me down. Let’s say Luke’s destiny wasn’t to bring balance to the force or take down the empire blahblah and so on. Instead, Luke’s destiny was just to be a lightsaber graffiti artist. He was born to wield a lightsaber and go around Tatooine and all parts of the galaxy and inscribe works of art into buildings and structures. Maybe he was good, maybe he was the best, maybe he was awful, but not only was it in his blood, but most paths who crossed in his life also seemed to scream it out. Yet, here is Luke, sitting on Uncle Ben’s farm or whatever it was (surely it couldn’t have been a farm, they lived on a frakk’n desert planet, but I don’t remember the original trilogy well enough at the moment and I don’t want to double check), doing just about everything and anything he can to try and toy with his destiny. Old man Obi-wan down the way? Sure, he’ll go have dinner with him and play chess, but that’s it. Even if subconsciously the force is telling him, “this dude got sabers, man.” Of course, destiny is destiny, and you can only push against the force for so long, so as we all know, at some point, he loses that battle, he wields a lightsaber, and in this instance, he carves a piece of himself into galactic culture, one work of art at a time. Imagine me as Luke.
For me, we aren’t talking lightsabers and artistic vandalism, I was born too late and too far away to ever have a shot to show what I can do with a glowing destruction stick, so it is music instead. My dad is a musician. He gave up the ways of a more normal lifestyle roughly around my age, traveled parts of the world, eventually wielded a guitar and grew our his hair and had a goatee at least a decade before it was ever acceptable. In that journey, he transformed into a total musician. There is no other way to put it. If you have one in your family or were ever close with an actual musician or even any other art form, you know what I’m talking about. He even had a pocket or two in his life where he put it on the back burner, forsook his ways. He tried. Barring something catastrophic and completely life changing, like say, a stroke, it is a self-insurgency that will never succeed. He is still a musician. In fact, he is in his home studio/office right now working on a song he wrote in the late 70’s, which now sounds a lot like Taio Cruz club jam.
I could talk endlessly on predispositions, sociology, psychology, and childhood development, or genes and DNA and what not, but I don’t need to. Plus, it’d take far too long to research enough to have my bases properly covered. But it is clear, from most ends, that any child who is born into this, is going to have good odds to be some sort of creative type (and most likely into music). Of course, there are well-known tactics against this, like having the other parent be the total opposite, like an accountant who enters the national crossword puzzle competition each year and eats Total for dessert, or just orphan that damn kid, but alas, my upbringing was rather conducive to being a creative little bugger. And when you are a little bugger and always exposed to this stuff, it fills you up. So then you have a little bugger that is like a creme-filled donut, full of music inside of him. You kind of always have to stay filled too. I usually was able to do this well enough by primarily listening. Having a vast level influence from an ear that has developed over more years than I’ve yet to live and subsequent;y a mature ear. In fact, this still works quite well, I might even go get my fix of some George Benson or Pat Martino playing live clips on YouTube and have my mind blown, or my world colored in by some masterful Brazilian samba compositions, and so on. But I guess you can only fill something up so much until things start to seep out. I was fortunate to get into video production when I was younger, which took on that role, as well as playing guitar on and off, but nothing serious or involved, call it a buffer.
Growing up as the kid of a musician also gives you an understanding of the full spectrum. For instance, being a musician can have some miserable qualities, especially if you ever have a family. I guess part of the problem is the scale of involvement. Music is a powerful thing. It can sweep up an avid listener, carry their life on its wings, so when you get to the creation side of things, the effects can only multiply. Basically, the quick and dirty of it is that “being a musician” can often be a poor life choice, if one considers every major detail looking to the future and the being of one who makes and performs music is the driving force of one’s life. Obviously, a heavy generalization and not always true, etc., Point being, I knew growing up that I never wanted to be a musician of any sort. I was a little kid and I knew that I wanted to get into something that would get me a good career and always be able to more than take care of myself and a prospective family.
Of course, you can couple other heavy elements in my life, for instance, where I went to college. Everyone at Belmont University is a musician. Even the business and nursing majors. In my opinion, if you don’t own a guitar, you’re cool, because its so rare. It seems like I’ve been fighting my surroundings, maybe not consciously, but on some level fighting these hands for walls which have been trying to mold me all these years. Evidently, I fought pretty hard too, I am pretty sure most people I know from school have no idea I have any sort of experience with music (I didn’t even listen to it Freshman year, call it a revolt).
Once again, Me… Luke on Tatooine.
All those years of slithering and snaking my way out of what the rest of my life had been trying to sculpt me into just to succumb to it unknowingly, unwittingly on what seemed like a different type of project. It kind of reminds me how you hear of these serial killers or top 10 fugitives getting brought in on something retarded and menial like jaywalking or getting pulled over with expired tags. Once I got to fiddling around with stuff on that very first night in May, the door wasn’t even cracked, instead, a wrecking ball had come and swiped the entire front of the house off. I was into it. Now I’m really into it.
I don’t think I can really talk about getting into music without comparing and contrasting what I know. I know how to make videos, shorts and stuff that you watch. I guess you can call it my first love, and it still is, my first and truest love, but I guess I’m going to have to turn to polygamy. So I’ll start there.
For me, here is the greatest thing I’ve experienced in my musical odyssey: I can take something from an idea to a more-or-less finished product all on my own. I’m not saying that this is how things usually are done, or how they should be done, in any creative medium. Especially in our modern devices, they are almost always largely collaborative; music and film no exception, but to properly do this on that scale, an immense amount of resources and financial backing is required. 99% of us will never be fortunate enough to be given such an opportunity, so we have to cut corners, or we have to find other ways to not only make these things that are within ourselves, but show that we are darn good at it, too. So on the most basic level, try to film something all on your own, then try to put out a demo of a song all by yourself. Both can be done, and at a high level, but I promise you, its just easier to do the music, you can do more and do more with less. So while I’m not saying it is how any of these things should be done, the opportunity is much greater, because if I am spending all this time with myself, filled with boundless creative energy and ideas, making music is much more accessible than a short film or mini-series, etc. With that said, the opportunity is also diluted because of this accessibility. Look around the Internet and you will see how true this is. Music communities, remix contests, the MySpaces and SoundClouds of the cyberworld, there are millions of people creating. Its great that in this day and age that so many can do this, but it also creates so much noise that most everybody still gets their voice muffled out in the endless amounts of noise. All of which is a line of thought for another day.
So I guess how quickly I can go from idea and opportunity to working and producing something substantial has me hooked. My ideas like my mini-series and so on feel so far away, because I want to do them right. I could bootstrap them as much as possible right now, but it wouldn’t do them right, it might even be good, but not right. Sometimes you have to do an idea right as opposed to just doing it. The stuff you see from swb crew is stuff to just do it (more often than not), whereas the “rapumentary” and the mini-series are things that are meant to be done right. On a general timeline, you have to assume that you only have so much time to take a couple good stabs at something and hope the dice land on any sort of recognition to either scale up the ladder a step to something more ambitious before you get locked into a certain ambition level for most of your life. And that’s why I’m trying so hard to do it right.
I feel like what I’m going to get into next is a feeling most of us know, that feeling of numbed dread and worry, when you have a friend who is about to put themselves out there.. which means they might fail miserably. Chasing a dream or a passion does not hold failure in any sort of regard, which is why the number dread and worry is there. For instance, your friend has always had a passion for stand-up comedy and they get a small-time gig at the local club. You’ve never actually seen them perform, or heard any of their bits. in fact, their personality doesn’t really strike you as some hilarious or center-of-attention type of funny person, so it builds even more. This is their dream though, they want to give it a shot, and in most cases, your role in their life is an encouraging friend. Sometimes we get put in the role of the realistic friend, but most of us will be the encourager to most people. Maybe they do it and have a lot of potential, pleasantly surprise you. You didn’t want them to fail, or expect them to, but you didn’t know, so you kind of braced for the worst. Maybe the worse did happen, so now what? You have to watch them struggle through that dream, but you are stuck with encouraging for now. Maybe they get better, maybe they don’t, but the key is that feeling of dread. I hope you know what I mean.
I’d like to think that this is the kind of dread that might build if I tell people I am making music, singing and rapping out of nowhere, which is basically what I tell people a lot, nowadays. There are all sorts of reasons I’d expect, and I don’t think I’d expect this out of myself, but this all circles back to what is becoming my mantra. If I actually bother to do something, yeah I do it my way, but I also make sure I do it well, really well. That’s what I call doing it right. It’s been a ton of work, from learning ProTools (foff to all of you babies who are gonna cry because I’m using PT and not whatever DAW you use), to developing my musical knowledge, learning all sorts of technical stuff that still feels reasonably over my head and always will (as to be expected with things that are both an art and a science like mixing and mastering).
It is intimidating, getting into something that isn’t in my usual repertoire, even if it has always neighbored my skill set and interests. I think the fact that I am suddenly stepping onto the turf of many of my friends’ gives that intimidation a growth spurt into something mythologically terrifying as the Boogie Man. It isn’t think that I am not as competent or as good even, but it just hasn’t been the focus. If I pick out a few people I know, I am going to be able to point out many things where I they’ve had a head start on, but the question has to be asked, what am I intimidated of? I think I am just worried about not being taken seriously more than anything. Because I am taking it seriously (even if some of the areas intentionally call for me to not).
All I can really count on at this point is covering as many bases as I can. I study my face off. I study anything I can. I spend weeks at a time obsessively listening to pop music, mainstream rap, old school-classic hip hop, stuff in other languages, and so on. Anything that can touch into what I’m doing, or what I might try to do. I listen and listen over again, focusing on just the production aspects, then the musical qualities, then the writing, the flow if it applies, the performance aspects, reading up on anything related that I can find (if worth the time) and so on. Of course, I am trying to not influence myself much at the same time, so then I disconnect, hoping to gain something I can recall at will as opposed to embed within myself. I have always done this with TV shows and films. You might call it what it looks like if you saw me binging on these things, but trust me when I call it study. Always mentally ingest and digest, I guess that’s my goal.
Furthermore, I read up or get any sort of knowledge passed on from those with expertise. Sometimes I even just steer conversations with friends in that direction just so I can pull in small things via osmosis (also known as listening). I’ve been learning each part of the process as I arrive to each step. For instance, I’ve worked on about 7-8 of our songs on various levels since June, but have only recently even thought about the mixing process on a couple songs. So I have only recently started my real education and training on the art and science of mixing.
This all feels very vague and uninteresting to me, which it probably is, but I think it is important, for me more than anyone else, that I reinforce this whole concept that I am doing my homework in everything I’m doing. I don’t want to feel a numb dread toward myself.
Now that I’ve covered the general scope of things, I am finally prepared to get into more specific details on my experience with this project, and hopefully more interesting thoughts than what I’ve presented here. The real thing to note here is that I feel somewhat like a musician these days, like, that mentality. I’m working on new songs all the time, and I even have started writing songs on the guitar apart from this project. I don’t plan on being a starving musician for the rest of my life, or really for any part, but I also guess I ran my course and have to accept where I’m at and who I am. I was practically born to celebrate life musically in some way, even if all to myself. So from this day on, I plan on doing that. Consider this my rebirth. Maybe for a lot of you I know, this may even come off as foreign, but pretty much the instant I started down this path, I knew, this has always been some part of me.