A Day in the Life of a High-Functioning Amateur Musician
So here's a day in the life of a busy, relatively unpopular, local musician. A high-achieving amateur, I like to say.
I have my yearly—well, right now it's a yearly, but it needs to be happening more often because I'm enjoying it—three-hour solo set, which is a ridiculous amount of time if you don't play solo acoustic a lot.
I have a DJ gig this weekend, which I'm switching to deep house because I feel like that really worked last week. (I'm doing the same place two weeks in a row.)
I've got a Daphne Falls rehearsal coming up that I've got to have all the backing tracks set for. If not, at least the structure has to be there. I can still change a bunch of stuff.
And a bass rehearsal next week for Buckdancer's Choice. We've got four or five new songs.
So I'm trying to balance the time, trying not to freak out, and trying to remember to actually enjoy this. Which, honestly, is much less of a "try" right now. I really am enjoying it.
Tonight I'm working on a few cover songs. One is A Night Like This by The Cure, which is a song that hit me right between the eyes at exactly the right time. One of those things I ingested in real time. I would argue with young Cure hipsters that it's tough to fully get if you weren't there. I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying my experience with that song is different. Clearly.
I'm working through about 42 songs to pare it down to 30-something for the gig. I've got ten days. I've played all of these songs before. I've already eliminated the ones I wanted to learn but realistically can't. But there's other stuff, like Bittersweet Symphony, that sounds kind of cool acoustically. One chord progression all the way through. I can do stuff like that.
I'm also building little drum kits and arps on the MPC Live to put behind me. One thing I'm noticing is that the snare kind of messes things up. Take the backbeat out, and it gets much cooler. Otherwise, it sounds like you're trying to fake a band, and that is dead last on the list of things I'd ever want to do onstage or look like I'm trying to do.
Also, all day I've been listening to deep house. I have a new appreciation for it. Sometimes I think it's music for NPCs and COVID nerds. But I'm starting to get it now. I understand how to DJ with it, and a lot of the new stuff coming out is great. I'm going through a bunch of new playlists, obviously from Anjunadeep and Colorize, and then a bunch of older stuff I really like. Just a really modern-sounding DJ set. As I said earlier this week, I'm going to use the djay algorithm. It's just working for me.
I have not touched or looked at my bass.
I did finish my last basic track for Daphne Falls yesterday. I think there's eight or nine total. I also had to move a gig with them, which was terrible. I've been so much better about scheduling, but I missed it and had already committed to something in late August.
So this is today. Plenty of texts going back and forth from Daphne Falls. A booking text for Buckdancer's Choice. Also, I've got a post about those things.
Also mailed off a bass that I sold.
Also I almost bought an MPC Live II Retro Edition. Somebody offered me an insane price. But I've got to say, I'm really loving the Live I—its compactness and just the way it feels. I'm sticking with it.
I did reach out to someone online about refinishing it because it's gone sticky and gross. But also... that shitty look is kind of cool.
Anyway.
I also worked.
I also changed the battery in my wife's car.
That's it--what a day looks like for a high-functioning amateur local Austin musician.
Like I always say, sometimes I just wish I could sit around and watch Netflix. And that's not a self-compliment/ flex. I really do wish that sometimes.