Getting In the Christmas Mood

Today I was at a Lowe's hardware store. They already have their Christmas trees and decorations display up and running and immediately I got the urge to make Christmas music. That's all it took for me. I'm definitely not ready for Christmas but this is surely the time to start working on some Christmas songs. The music industry usually gets their new holiday albums recorded in the summer and begin releasing them now or shortly. Me, well, I guess I do things my own way which is not always the most efficient. But it's still a great time to record perhaps a couple of new tunes and maybe even a few covers.

Seeing all those decorated trees and lights and everything just brought the Christmas mood onto me. Christmas music is so timeless and all those classic recordings from the 50's, 60's & 70's started coming into my head. I became very excited at the thought of creating some new Christmas songs. And it's not only because I really love Christmas music but also because I still believe that holiday music is a great way to get into the music business. Yes, that is still ultimately my goal because I cannot see any fulfillment in doing anything else. Of course, I will continue to make music regardless as long as I am able.

So from this point forward I'm going to buckle down and start trying to reach some year-end goals. These include at least one new holiday tune, a holiday cover tune and another song I started working on months ago but have not finished. This song in particular is my longest song yet at ten minutes. My plan for this tune was to make it a 2-part song. The first part would feature lyrics and the second would be instrumental. I envisioned it as bookends for my next album, with the first part opening the album and the second half closing it out. I'm not terribly concerned about the instrument tracks. I already have the main guitar track laid down. My main concern is that I have had some writer's block on the lyrics and I need to get it written soon. This will be a mainly acoustic guitar song with a good amount of minimoog sounds.

2015 Coming to a Fast Close

Gosh, it's already October! And yeah, I haven't worked on any music this past summer. I think now is a better time for me. Did I mention that where I do most of my musical work is extremely hot during the summer? It is and this past summer was no exception. It is much more conducive to creating now and I will get back to it.

I had toyed with the idea of recording an entire Christmas album this year. Obviously, that did not happen and it's safe to say it will not. I may yet make another new song and perhaps a few covers of public domain ones.

Can I still put out another album of non-Christmas material in 2015? I would love to! A goal of mine would be to release a new album each year. So is it realistic for me within the next 3 months to put together another record of original music? Most likely not. But I do have to crank up the gears in terms of creating music for the remainder of the year. I had plenty of song ideas this year thanks to a particular band I spent a lot of time listening to.

Anyway, I don't think I'll be releasing albums at the end of the year anymore. A Christmas album, sure. But otherwise, no. See, the thing with releasing an album in December is that the next year comes up in 30 days or less and then your album starts feeling old. So it's January of the new year and you start thinking, "I released my album last year," or "My album is from last year." And it was just a month ago but it still feels older than it should. Thus, henceforth I will be releasing albums in the spring or early summer. That will be the goal but I will not hold myself to that rigidly. I will allow myself the period from January to October of any given year to release a new record but will try to target specifically the March-June period.

There is nothing more thrilling to me than recording music. To be able to play back something--a moment in time--and listen to it endlessly is absolutely amazing. Playing live music is great too but most of the time live music is not recorded, whatever the setting happens to be. A recording can be played over and over again and it is what really sticks in people's minds. As someone who has played live many times I have felt those moments of musical ecstasy where everything is just so perfect and complimentary. But I have experienced that even more often through the magic of recording and manipulating sound. Maybe I should do experimental music! Well, I'm open to doing all kinds of music except the kinds I'm not open to.

Anyway, I am intent on spending the rest of this year doing some serious recording.