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Writing

What I Love

I’ve written a lot of things. Stories, essays, poems, songs. Typically, these have ended up in one of two categories: “this is garbage, I hate it,” or “someone else says this is good so I guess it’s good.” I’ve also made a lot of music. Mostly amateurly, though on rare occasions professionally. But these performances have tended to fall into the same two categories: “this is garbage, I hate it,” or “someone else says this is good so I guess it’s good.” But increasingly, over… Read More »What I Love

Mood Music

Twenty years ago, or thereabouts, I had a collection of mix CDs which each bore a label according to the mood of the music contained on the CD1. I can’t remember all of them, but I’m pretty sure they included things like “Giddy,” “Silly,” and “Angsty.” Nowadays I keep my music on Apple Music playlists. And although I do often listen to entire albums, I have two main playlists that I will turn to when I’m not in the mood to do that. The first… Read More »Mood Music

Fire

You ever feel on such creative fire because you’re more than 30,000 words into a manuscript and almost through the demo process for your second EP and then you started a writing workshop facilitated by your favourite teacher from high school and you forget about your blog and don’t write anything for six weeks? Maybe? No? Well, that’s where I’m at. Let’s break it down by project. First off, the novel. I’ve done NaNoWriMo (https://nanowrimo.org) twice before and, although fun, the output from that has… Read More »Fire

Spark

I’ve been reflecting on my creative output over the last year. Yes, we put out an EP and we planned and executed a release event. But as far as writing, which I consider kind of a core aspect of my personality and sense of self, I only wrote about 30 non-EP blog posts, and I don’t think I finished a single new song. Not to say my creative self didn’t get any exercise, between putting together arrangements and recording and rehearsing and performing, but it’s… Read More »Spark

Music and Lyrics

A melody is like seeing someone for the first time… But then, as you get to know the person, that’s the lyrics. Their story. Who they are underneath. It’s the combination of the two that makes it magical. –Music and Lyrics If pressed, in the great debate of music vs. lyrics, I might say I fall on the lyrics side… by a hair. And only because words are maybe a bit easier for me to analyse and understand. Really, though, my opinion on the matter… Read More »Music and Lyrics

Testimonial

Well, we’ve finished recording all five tracks for our EP, and I thought it was time for a bit of a recording retrospective. I feel incredibly proud but also kind of hollow, like I’ve put all of myself somewhere else and now have to figure out how to regenerate a new self. Like a lizard. Only, less tail and more soul. I spent years working up to this, and I really feel like I’ve put everything into these five songs. I’m also really going to… Read More »Testimonial

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