When my children were very little, I’d make up songs to sing to them — songs about every day life as a toddler. In fact, I have a habit of making up little ditties about anything really. My opinion is that any activity is worthy of an internal soundtrack!
But busting out into a chorus about how rude it is that some guy cut in front of you at the coffee shop is, well, a bit socially unacceptable. So for the most part, those little mini-songs usually stay where it’s safe (in my head, or if they’re at least somewhat interesting, written down or recorded as a voice memo on my phone).
But when kids enter the picture, that internal soundtrack naturally comes out — partly due to lack of sleep, but also because the amazing joy that a little song or rhyme can bring to a life situation with a toddler.
So…making pancakes, going in the bathtub, weaning off a pacifier, learning the alphabet, and of course going to the potty, all became little songs that marked important development milestones and memories for our whole family.
And I thought, this would be an incredible memory (for them, but also for us as parents) to have these recorded. So, I embarked on a project of recording an original children’s album back in 2012, and in 2019, I finally released it.
That begs the question…“What took so long?”
I admit, I could have recorded many of these ditties with a handheld recorder and could have called it done in a fraction of the time. But I decided on some important goals right from the beginning of the project:
- Learn a new DAW
- Practice proper production techniques
- Experiment with different styles (and in the process, find my voice)
Learn a new DAW
For #1, this was important to me for a few reasons. Through the first decade of the 2000’s, I had mainly used Sony’s ACID product to record and arrange music, and although I was still proud of the product (as a Sony employee and former programmer on the product), I was also transitioning into a Mac-oriented world. I saw the writing on the wall: ACID was a Windows-based application, and updates were infrequent. I had to find and learn a new DAW.
I decided (back in 2010) to learn ProTools. At the time, this made a lot of sense to me – it is (was?) the industry standard, and knowing ProTools seemed like an important skill for any producer to have.
I put dedicated effort into learning ProTools, recorded all the basic tracks, and edited and produced final versions of 3 of the tunes.
But a few key main reasons caused me to move away from ProTools — too long of a story to go into now. The bottom line, against all advice from leading experts, I switched DAWs in the middle of a project…but couldn’t be happier with my choice of moving to Logic Pro X in 2014.
Practice proper production techniques
Although I have some background creating audio software, knowing how a compressor works compared to actually knowing how to use a compressor is akin to reading how to ride a bike vs. actually riding a bike. You need to have hands-on experience, and move through the process of experimentation, discovery, frustration, and success. Basically, learn what works and what doesn’t on your own terms.
And for me, it came down to the whole mastery topic again. To learn something well, it takes dedicated practice.
So even though I could have quickly recorded some parts, do some basic mixing and apply a preset-based maximizer plug-in on the output buss, I decided that I’d take the time to build some audio production muscle. Recording, arranging, editing, and mastering would all be stages that I wouldn’t rush through, but use as a learning opportunity.
Experiment with different styles (find my voice)
Although the two goals above are certainly very important to me, this last goal was potentially the most critical.
I joke with my friends that my first album was an album of “children’s music”, and the plan for my next album would be an album of “adult music” (cue the wah wah guitar). But the truth to that joke is that I have literally notebooks full of ideas and “real” songs that I one day would like to record and release, but always felt encumbered by the questions: “What do I sound like?”, or “What is my voice?”, or “What is my style?”
I have interests in a wide gamut of musical genres — ranging from jazz and blues, rock and pop, funk and gospel. I play mostly keyboards, but have trained on a variety of instruments and on voice. And I value the acoustic song (performed in one take) as much as the artistry that can be demonstrated by an expert producer using modern audio software tools, synths and plug-ins.
To summarize, I have a lot of musical inputs, and I wanted to find out which ones really resonated with me. What works, and what doesn’t.
I felt like the only way to do that was to leave the playing field wide open. I didn’t want to lock down a genre, or instrumentation, sounds, and production techniques, but instead let myself try anything to ultimately find my voice.
The result including songs that were simple (piano and voice) and songs that were fully produced. Songs that challenged me on different acoustic instruments, and songs that had beatboxing, vocoder effects and drum machines. Songs that were jazz and blues, and songs that were pop and reggae.
Was it fun? Oh yeah. Did I learn a lot? Oh yeah. But did I find my voice?
Well, now that the album is done, I’d like to suggest that finding your voice is a continual journey, not an ultimate destination. But I think I have enough to springboard off of when working on that next album…(cue the wah wah guitar)
Give a listen to Short Stories on your favorite streaming platform (Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play Music, Amazon Music), and let me know what you think!
Next up, part 2 of this post: the digital liner notes for the album.