Making a Record during a Pandemic

I'm constitutionally unable to sit still. In times like these, that comes in handy. Some folks are a little on edge whether because of boredom or frustration or anger.

I figure it's a good time to get projects done.

The beauty of DIY is you're not stuck as you would be if you've been recording at someone's studio and are now locked out and waiting for the ok to restart. The downside is you have no excuse to put it off, and it will be calling you as you sit on the couch asking why you're not fixing the guitar part or recording the lead vocal because the scratch vocal sucks!

Because I don't like how I sound right now, ok? Stop bugging me.

I bring that up only because I've got ONE song that's been kicking my butt. The rest of the tune is finished, sounds good, and is tired of waiting for me to get it together. My answer was to move onto another song (which went without a hitch. Figures, right?) 

The other thing that DIY gives you is the ability to hone your sound, which is both important and misunderstood. Perhaps the biggest is that you have to sound like a record maee at a big time studio with every resource available. You will not sound like that. You just won't. And recording software has its own sound, though people will argue that, but if you're using plug-ins versus using outboard gear like guitars and keyboards, then you're using the sound signature that they created, and there's nothing wrong with that if you like the sound.

Finally, I go by the simple rule that so long as it's clean and as clear as you want-can the voices and instruments be heard-then it's fine. Will there be comments or criticism? Always, but that's the norm, and like all creative ventures you won't please everyone.

There are times I wish I had the access and opportunities that big acts have to make the record I hear in my head. But they too have to justify and recoup those costs, because people got to be paid and record labels never forget.

So, you do your own thing and own it, be proud of it, and if you get any blowback remember this appropriate retort:

What do they know?

©2020 David William Pearce

Waiting is the Hardest Part...

I started this a month ago, became even more depressed and...

It looks like this will be a lost year for performers... and not just the megastars whose tours have been cancelled or postponed.

All of us. Even the lowly open mic'ers.

It's possible small shows, small gatherings might be allowed later in the year, but bigger shows might not happen till next year assuming some sort of reliable treatment or vaccine. So it's goodbye concerts, sporting events, festivals, big weddings, all the stuff people love getting together for. But don't worry, the joy boys running the show assure us that someday, somewhere, it'll all be ok again.

None of them, I might add, are losing their livelihoods, connections, businesses.

They are the ones who did little to protect us in the first place.

Am I angry?

It would seem so.

A month later...

Now I'm thinking maybe June or July...

Until then we have Zoom, which is deeply imperfect for concerts, foremost being that you have to have a setup that is designed for music rather than chat, which is the default for Zoom. That means you have to have a good (decent) interface...

This is mine.

...Which, ironically because of disrupted supply chains and manufacturing interruptions, means they're hard to come by.

Jimminy Cricket!

I participated in a round-robin Zoom concert a week ago and, all in all, it went well-not perfect-but well. And as you would expect, there were issues with internet connectivity, sound quality, camera quality-older phones and computers do not offer clarity in picture quality- which may determine how much effort you want to put into how you look and how well people will be able to see you.

All in all.

It's better than nothing, but it's nothing like playing for real people rather than the computer with images of people on it.

I don't like it.

But... it's what we've got for now.

©2020 David William Pearce

End of an Era

The CD Baby store is no more. Aghast nobodies, and semi-nobodies such as yours truly, are now left bereft of a place in which to send their many passionate fans to sate their unquenchable desire for our latest product. This means if I want to move any product, or my music as I sometimes call it, I must do so myself.

I am deeply ambivalent about this.

I am not a naturally born salesman, and if I were, I would have don't much better the couple of months I sold vacuums back in the bad old days before I realized I wouldn't become the next Peter Gabriel, and went back to engineering. I did write and record in yon days, but I had no way to turn that into any recognizable product that I thought might appeal or sell to the general public.

Fast forward many years.

Like many thousands of artists, I glommed on to the CD Baby bandwagon (huh, huh, get it?) and did poorly, but I did have some sales both physical and digital, and I'm sorta maybe kinda known at this point in my late blooming career. I retired from engineering after 40 years, if you're curious. Now, as I still maintain my own website, mrprimitivemusic.com, it is incumbent upon me to figure this out and setup my own bustling e-commerce page.

I'm not thrilled, but it may be the only way to unload the remaining CDs I have outside of giving them away or gifting their disposal on my kids once I depart this mortal coil. On the plus side, I have resisted the urge to purchase many things like T-shirts and other geegaws that I have no plausible way of unloading without taking a financial bath. To that end, I feel for the struggling bands that loaded up for tours that have now been cancelled and the merc they may not be able to sell and the money they were counting on from those sales.

However, if I somehow get my s**t together it may be possible for some of you, if so inclined to buy an autographed CD from yours truly, the artist.

Again, maybe.

©2020 David William Pearce

We're All the Same...

If nothing else, with most of us practicing social distancing, the contagion has shown us all to be pretty much the same.

What am I talking about?

In this case performers, singers, songwriters.

We all look the same now, singing from our living rooms. Now that may strike some as snarky-maybe a little-but it shows, if fact, that behind all the makeup and lights and sets and staging, and the like, is someone simply playing a song. And if it's jarring at first to see your favorite artist sitting in a T-shirt and jeans strumming out a low-fi, home-streamed song you've never heard straight up, it's also reinforcing that we all start with the same thing: an idea that becomes a tune that we lyricise in our own space.

Ok, so maybe at the top they get together in a fancier space, but you get the drift. And it makes them all a little more human.

Also, and this is sorta important, it shows that at its base, creativity happens right where you are, and as we're either encouraged, asked, or required under penalty of scolding or worse to stay home, might as well make the most of it.

And yes, I get tired of hearing that too.

I'd really like to be out and about-I get enough at home stuff like this writing you're reading (hopefully)-listening to people play and yak and drink and socialize; all the stuff humans are wired to do.

But, for now, that's not in the cards.

Groan!

So for now check out the artists you enjoy and see that they're just like us... for the most part... and don't forget the ones who aren't so well known.

©2020 David WIlliam Pearce

Which Guitar to Play?

Seems like a odd question to ask.

Originally, I was going to write about roadies, or more precisely, the joy of setting up for a show, which in my instance and for many performers I know, is the performer, but...

Shows for now are kaput.

So, we'll focus on the phenomena of guitars going in and out of favor.

As you can see I have a few guitars, 14 to be exact. And I justify have that many because they're all a little different in tone and texture, so when I record, I have a lot of choices. That's my rational.
Interestingly, and this is the point of post, is that often, some guitars go out of fashion and get played little if at all. This seems terribly unfair, which is silly, as they are inanimate objects, but we personify everything, so why should guitars be any different?

Take the guitar above as an example. It's a Peavy T-60, that I bought in Hawaii in 1982. I had been in Denver for recording of the album, PearceArrow, and the studio had one and I took to it. So when I got back to Hawaii and was out shopping, I bought it. The salesman impressed on me that it was like a Fender Telecaster, but less expensive. Naturally, at that time, it being the new guitar, I played it quite a bit, if not exclusively.

But over time I bought other guitars, and it slowly ended up being played here and there, but not often.

Oddly, what brought it back into regular play was my going back and re-recording  the album, Winter, where the original demo tracks were recorded with the Peavy. And when I was gearing up to play some of the Winter songs live, I found I liked using it for the lead parts.

In the meantime, the other guitars bide their time waiting...

I sometimes worry about that, that I'm neglecting them. Makes you wonder about guitars in those big collections.

©2020 David William Pearce.

What to Sing

I've often wondered if what inevitably causes people to drop out of open mics and performing, and this is particularly directed and singer/songwriters, is the constant need for new material. It takes a lot of work to write songs, and time to create a catalog of songs to perform. I have 35 in rotation out of 110 recorded songs. The ones I don't perform, so far, are either tough to perform with just a guitar, or a little out there for open mics...

Maybe if I do more extended shows...

But I feel for those getting into this and only having a small number of songs and not wanting to play them over and over sometimes for the same people-we tend to go to the same events across the city. It's nice to have something new.

There's also the pressure to be something of a machine when it comes to writing, which is harder than you might think. I go through writing cycles where I write a lot in a short time period, but it's by no means regular, so I'm thankful I have older material to bring out when I feel I've been playing the same stuff over and over.

It also makes me think of how quickly bands and singers come and go either because all they had was that one hit song, or labored to recreate the magic that propelled them into the mainstream consciousness to begin with. Even multi-hit bands, groups, individuals are always dealing with what's next and whether it'll be as good or better or worse than what came before and whether they've had their run and are now consigned to only being remembered for their greatest hits and little later.

Which brings us to the pressure to continually produce "content", soas to stay relevant in the public eye, i.e. one's fickle fans. This is a common bromide now from those who counsel and advise people in the arts, music particularly. But creating something interesting and meaningful is rarely machine like, as I mentioned above, and even those who can, often produce the same thing over and over, with a change here and there to distinguish it from last weeks output.

Sometimes it all seems like too much.

I think I'm rambling.

Take care.

©2020 David William Pearce

More Thoughts on the end of Rock N' Roll as We Know It

Rockers are petering out.

Yet they still sell!

As has been lamented in these last years about the end of rock 'n roll, along with the rise of rap and whether modern pop is a bellwether of the music to come or more of the pap that many believe it to be and has been for nigh on a half-century, is, if one looks closely, the ginormous influence and effect of the titans of the rock biz on all the younger bands and players who must exist within the confines of what the legendary rockers created, and to fight for whatever air they can find in the rocken-verse.

Which brings us to the two articles listed above that show how the dinosaurs of rock continue to dominated and vacuum up the concert dollars and remarkably, continue to sell records-yes, records, in this the 21st century. How is a nube to make any measurable leeway in such an environment?

Though it should not be taken lightly; I certainly don't being up there in years, time and tide is slowly winnowing out the big players on the concert circuit, putting pressure on promoters to makeup the lost revenue. Sure The Biebs and Billie Eilish will pull in their fans, but those fans don't have the discretionary pocket money that doe-eyed boomers do for their geriatric musical heroes and a willingness to buy all manner of ephemera that their kids will one day have to make sense of, and dispose of.

That's a lot of cash money falling off the table.

Then there's record sales, yes-as I said before-records. According to BuzzAngle's 2019 report, who are the top selling rock bands? The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac. The only non-classic rock band to make it: Nirvana.

Pop did ok with Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, who had the best-selling vinyl record, as well as Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra. Total album sales included Elvis, and for the sake of some sense of sanity, Springsteen and Metallica. The youngest rock band on the list? Tool, who have been around for 20 years.

I find all of that remarkable, but not surprising. The question all this poses is what going to happen as more of rock elder generation dies off. As the Guardian articles notes more and more of rock's legends are giving up touring because it's too grueling: it killed Tom Petty! Kiss, Ozzy, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond (alright, they're not considered rockers in the classic sense, but you know what I'm getting at) have called it quits.

Maybe when the oldsters are out of the picture and not longer taking all the light, new bands will take their place.

Maybe.

©2020 David William Pearce