Something that I’ve never tried before, and something that I’m very excited to try, is this idea of having a production blog to sort of talk about what things I’m actually involved in and what I’m working on in reference to the Æthereal project. One of the great things about being a musician in this modern age of Internet accessibility is the ability to be able to throw out thoughts, discussions and other things in a way that doesn’t require PR firms or months of preparation. Instead, you can just spew what’s going on in your brain and with the band into the open void of the Internets. The æther, if you will allow me to be so self-referential.
Because I designed and run this website, I’m able, then, to more easily just pop in and spew out information about what I’m working on and what these things actually mean. These will show up on the front page, but you can also access the archives from the menu as well if you want to sort out the banal news (or exciting news, for that matter) and just jump right into what’s going on. It’s here that I’ll discuss about writing, thoughts and ideas, why I’ve made certain decisions and how those decisions will play out in the long run. This will be where I do my “studio diaries”, but since I’m all DIY there’s no studio, just my home.
I look forward to this rare opportunity to communicate openly about this kind of stuff. Screw all the distance stuff, I think it’s fun to be able to produce directly and throw it out there. I hope someday that Æthereal because a bigger project over time, but even if it doesn’t, I hope that those who pay attention will enjoy these blogs and that they’ll open up discussion about music, self-production and all of the things that come with it.
Working on a New Track
While I don’t want to show off too much, I’d like to say that I’m really stoked with the work that I was doing today. I was feeling particularly inspired due to some reading that I was doing that was totally separate from anything to do with metal at all. I don’t know how everyone else is, but I find that sometimes my best ideas come when I’m not at all working on the things that need inspiring. Right now I’m reading a book called Racial Domination, Racial Progress which is actually a text book that I helped to do research on. During one of the sections I got a sudden insight into how I could do two things that I want to do at the exact same time. First, I can work on an EP for release later this summer or early in the year, something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, and at the same time I can grapple with a smaller concept that I’ve been trying to work on.
What was the most fascinating aspect of this whole thing, is that I was then inspired immediately thereafter to go and write something. That thing that I went to write transformed also fit perfectly with another piece that I’d be working on that had been giving me trouble for a while now and boom, new song. I know a lot of artists don’t like talking about the creative process and I know that some turn it into a job. For me, inspiration always strikes at the weird moments when it’s not supposed to be hitting me and this was a perfect example.
The other thing that occurred to me is that there are so many ways to work on a concept. In the entire creation progress I find lyrics the most difficult thing to work on. This is mainly because I think that it’s so easy to be totally trite when you’re writing. Because of this, I decided a long time ago that often times lyrics should be left until last and they should be written cohesively with a certain idea in mind. In this case, the concept on which I wish to write on could be approached from many different perspectives: but I’ve long thought that most of them would be cheesy. This new approach is something new altogether and I’m really looking forward to seeing it through.