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Music

Having to do with Delicately Off-Balance the duo, or music more generally.

Love It or Hate It

I have a complicated relationship with my voice, which I don’t think is uncommon among singers. In fact, I think a complicated relationship with your skills and talents is not uncommon regardless of what they might be. Sometimes I love my voice. I can hear power and strength, softness, tenderness, clarity. I can hear all the work I’ve put into learning how to use it. I can hear the emotion I’m trying to convey. And I really, really love it. Other times I hate my… Read More »Love It or Hate It

Stickers

We bought stickers from one of those custom branding places where you upload your logo and you can put it on all kinds of merchandise. We just thought, “I wonder if we could get stickers printed,” and then we did. Three sheets of twenty. We had a coupon code and took it out of the EP budget and in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t too bad. Why do we need stickers? Well, officially, we’re going to stick them on all our equipment and… Read More »Stickers

Inspiration

I’m pretty sure that somebody said that the first rule of inspiration is to be there when it happens, but my skill with Google is insufficient to track such a quote down. Let’s say, I may have been the originator of the sentiment, and if I was, I’m both impressed and disappointed. It’s true though, isn’t it? Unusual things happen all the time, and usual things happen even more often. But if somebody’s not looking at the right spot in the right light at the exact right… Read More »Inspiration

Holidays, Nostalgia, and Grief

There’s something about holidays that calls to nostalgia. And among holidays, for me, Christmas is the one that stirs up memories like more or less nothing else. And then those memories set off other memories and… well, I cry a lot around the end of the year. Nostalgia, my quick Google search tells me, is widely considered to be a good thing nowadays. It promotes all kinds of good stuff in the psyche. I won’t summarize the research because better sources already have (heck, Wikipedia… Read More »Holidays, Nostalgia, and Grief

How I “Songwrite”

I thought it would be “fun” to talk about how I write songs. It might be of some interest if you either write songs yourself, or like my songs. Then again, it might not, in which case I apologise. It’s not always exactly the same, but the variations are as predictable as the basic method (typically amounting to swapping the order of any two given steps, or simply writing all the lyrics first), so I feel pretty comfortable calling it… my Process. Inspiration 90% of… Read More »How I “Songwrite”

A-DAW-rable: Baby Steps in Logic

I’m in a place right now where I’m wanting to pour a whole lot of information into my head at once. I want to be able to create beautifully finished home recordings, and I’m just not sure if that’s a thing that’s in my future. I’ve written before about The Buzz. Basically, it’s what I call the combination of anxiety and bipolar cognition problems that, more often than I’d like, prevents me from accomplishing whatever it is I’m striving for. Well, The Buzz is the… Read More »A-DAW-rable: Baby Steps in Logic

Stage Fright

Lots of people experience stage fright. Not just beginners but also highly skilled performers. It’s no reflection on how good you are, or even how good you think you are, just a reaction to the idea of performing in front of whatever group of people you’re supposed to be performing in front of. Lots of people experience stage fright. I never experienced stage fright. I started “performing” (singing in church choirs and musicals) very young. Probably no later than kindergarten-age, though I couldn’t tell you precisely. So… Read More »Stage Fright

Learning with an Audience

I don’t know how many people actually enjoy doing things wrong, but I have to imagine there are plenty who don’t hate it as much as I do. I can just about do it when I’m on my own, but the problem with learning by making mistakes on your own is that you probably don’t know you’re making mistakes or, more important, you don’t know how to fix them. That’s where teachers come in. Someone who’s already past the stage of making your particular mistakes,… Read More »Learning with an Audience

The EP: Demo Day

This is less edited than usual, since I’ve written it mostly yesterday (in relation to the day I post it). Please enjoy the haphazard nature of today’s musings. There’s a project that’s been on my mind for several years now: going into a studio and recording my/our own songs. We’ve been saving up, birthdays and Christmases and what we could spare from bonuses and tax refunds. The process so far has been very slow. But now, we’re finally moving. We’re working on demos of the… Read More »The EP: Demo Day

Back From the Silence

For a balanced perspective, or at least one that could conceivably be called delicately off-, I should also touch on the other main topic of this blog: so here is my history with music, its place in my life then and now, and (an overview of) the way my mental illness and my musical life wind around each other. As you may be completely unsurprised to learn, music has always played an important role in my life. In the earlier days, a lot of it… Read More »Back From the Silence