A Reminder About Writing vs. Sound-Chasing
(A self reminder!)
I had a really good reminder this morning of the acoustic demo thing I’ve been talking about. For review purposes, I’ve had a lot of success in that hour in the morning just sitting down with the acoustic guitar and writing. And I think whatever the instrument is — acoustic guitar, piano, whatever — you can get something done in an hour. I can get something done in an hour. You should be able to too. It’s just practice and reps.
But this morning I was going to flesh out one of the tracks to send to Hoag so he could make the drum track-the foundation. The idea is that I flesh it out here, get the arrangement right, send it to Hoag, he’ll come back to me and say, “Hey, can I do this, this, and this?” I’ll say yes. Then I can take what he sent me, put bass etc. on it, do my thing, send it back to him, maybe cut the vocal here at home, maybe cut the vocal there, and then we release the track.
So that’s the process.
Well, this morning, in getting those sounds together, I got the intro and a chorus done in an hour — because I was just trying to figure out all the sounds and all the stuff that goes with that. So it was a very good reminder not to mix those two modes-writing and production.
While it felt like I got nothing done, I actually got a lot done. And because I’ve worked through and know a decent amount about the MPC and all that, I was able to get as far as I did.
But opening Pandora’s box of the MPC — or God forbid your DAW — these things are not writing. No matter what you say, you’ll never convince me otherwise.