So, updates like these are probably slow reading at baseline, when you’re trying to juggle recording an album on top of a job and a family and get a couple hours to work nights during the week and maybe again as much during the weekend. And then you get sick…

Ironically, the genesis of this whole project getting wrapped up WAS getting sick, and between a couple other factors not having the ability or the energy to get in much training on my road bike over the winter, so turning to music as my other outlet and trying to finish up writing an album’s worth of music from a collection of half finished song sketches. There’s a difference in precision, though, when you’re trying to flesh out ideas vs when you’re making a record you intend to release, and the upshot is after just going to bed as early as possible for a couple nights during the week I finally sat down to try to wrap up bass on the last couple songs, tuned up, and hit record… and couldn’t find the pocket to save my life. At first I figured it was just I’m a pretty mediocre bassist and kept pushing through, but on Saturday afternoon I started to feel a little more clear headed and went back down to my studio to try to punch in a section I wasn’t happy with, and suddenly my playing was, while still hardly perfect, infinitely more in the groove than it had been that morning. Go figure, it’s almost as if being fuzzy-headed with crushing congestion messes with your timing…

I guess this is one of those perks working in a home studio – I don’t know how the pros do it, I guess, maybe back in the heyday was one thing when you’re the Rolling Stones and you just rent a French villa for months on end and when you happen to run out of heroin you get some good rhythm section takes and at the end of the summer you have Exile on Main Street, but these days, working on a tight budget, if you’ve booked two weeks of studio time and on day two you wake up feeling like death, what do you tell your band? “Hey, I can’t make it today, my nose is running?” There’s a lot of things going for you as a professional musician working in a professional studio, but the one thing unquestionably working against you is time; that time is money. Tracking in the comfort of your own home as a hobbyist, with maybe less time than you used to have but no monetary cost as the second hand ticks, however, time is an asset, and if you have to write off a week, you can do that.

Anyway, one of the two songs I was working on, I got some pretty solid takes, and I think ultimately performances I can live with (and I really like this song, it’s a vast departure from anything I’ve written before and it’s a lot of fun, so I really want to get it right). The other I need to go back and listen to with a clear head, which I’m not 100% there yet, but I’ve been able to breathe through my nose for two whole days now for the first time in a week, so I’m getting there.

This is the intro to that song, by the way – it’s a fun bassline, was a lot of fun to write and figure out how to work with a rhythm part that, well, also is a lot of fun. And the other perk about being an amateur is, you get to do whatever you think is fun, and not really give a damn if anyone will pay money for it (since you can be fairly sure they won’t).

Anyway, off to find the NyQuil.