30 dropframe - making an album live on camera

[smoothmoniker]

I’m doing a record of my own songs this summer, and opening up as much of the process as possible to anyone who wants the voyeuristic thrill of watching somebody create an album. You can watch streaming video from the studio, subscribe to podcasts of the songs in process, with daily updated mixes.

The thing that will be hard for me, but I think interesting for other people, will be letting people see how much of the proccess is just plain ugly. Quick sketches of half-broken ideas, themes that aren’t quite thought through, pushed into demo form, then reworked, and reworked, until they emerge as the things we all listen to and love. Being, as I think most creative people are, inherently insecure about what I do, I usually wait until something is finished, polished, mixed, and shrinkwrapped before I even acknowledge that I had a hand in it. I want to preserve the idea of the inscrutible artistic muse, the illusion that inspiration strikes, and what emerges is just the song of the heavens echoing down through my pasty white hands. I’d rather not acknowledge the part of creativity that’s just plain mundane craftwork, from sometimes ugly raw material to finished product.

I think that’s a copout. It’s a way of distancing ourselves from the object of our work. If our hands are muddy, then we own the thing, and good or bad, it’s ours. On the other hand, if it was sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus, then we get to remain the amanuensis, and the criticisms don’t really belong to us.

Not this time. I’m in this thing. Good or bad, ugly or beautiful, my hands will be muddy all over it.

So, the website is 30dropframe.com. Come check it out. It’ll either be spectacular, or a complete tragedy. Either way, it’ll be interesting to watch.