This year, I’ve been undergoing an experiment in sharing and releasing music. This song is the eighth instalment on that adventure.
There’s an established pattern set out for people like me who want to make music and share it with people on the internet. It goes like this:
cultivate a presence on a social media platform
shout (probably in short-form videos) as loud as you can for attention
try to get people to leave that platform and go to a different one so they can listen to your music for free.
And that’s it. It’s a highly mediated and impersonal process that’s designed to make other people money. When it feels like it’s working, brain chemicals sing. When it doesn’t, it’s like looking into an empty mirror.
The pay-off, people say, is that if you run the above loop enough times, you will earn what are called “fans”, who are the kind of person who (allegedly) will pay you “money” for “experiences” related to your music (although, probably not for the music itself).
Okay. Fine.
I’ve dabbled in some of that and probably will do so a bit more in the future, but I also want to try something different.
That’s what this newsletter has come to be about. Sure, Substack is also a social media platform. The difference is that here, I’m sending a song a month sent to a finite number of inboxes.
When we started in January, there were 150 of us. Now we have doubled in number. I’m thrilled you all are here, and I can’t wait to see where this project goes.
“I could fly, but never away”
Last month we met the main character who will be with us in the rest of this year’s songs. He’s a young man “with nowhere to be”.
He’s looking for a self. He does not know this.
In today’s song, we journey a little deeper into that forgetfulness.
He seeks and abandons lovers in search of something real. He neither knows nor knows how to know that in every moment, the Real already dwells “where you are”.
A sweet thing,
saying goodbye to a lover.
I’ll tell her it’s over.
A sweet thing,
saying goodbye to a lover of mine.
But were you real?
Or were you just the song I’m singing again?
Were you real?
Or were you just a word I don’t understand?And I could fly.
I could fly but never away.
I would fly.
I would fly but always stay
where you are,
where you are,
where you are.A sweet thing,
saying hello to another.
Now it’s forever.
A real thing,
saying hello to another of mine.
But are you real?
Or are you just a face that I will pretend
isn’t real,
just a face that I can see myself in.And so I fly.
And so I fly, but never away.
I can fly.
I can fly, but always stay
where you are,
where you are,
where you are.
A look into the tape-track song-shop
Today’s song, like every one in the series so far, was recorded first to my 4-track tape machine. It’s a lovely Yamaha MT100, which was a gift from a dear friend. It’s been my practice to capture every performance to tape, and then bounce the songs into the computer for the final arrangement, mix, and master.
The tape machine keeps me grounded in the real bodily experience that music both requires and is. It’s honestly less of an aesthetic choice (although, I do think it is fun and cool) than a practical one. I’ve been recording to tape for the same reason I started writing all my drafts by hand as a PhD student: my conversion is through my body. Whenever I forget this, it’s nothing but bad bad news.
Today’s song was the most complicated production in this 4-track series so far. It is also the one in which I strayed the furthest from the pure tape experience the series began with way back in January.
That somehow feels fitting for a song about being torn between realities and fantasies. Three times I sent the entire mix back to tape so I could record new vocals and other parts.
Part of the challenge with this song is that I already had a demo. Demos are tricky business. Often, one falls in love with a demo and has a hard time accepting the new version of the song as it emerges. In fact, the final mix you hear today actually incorporates the saxophone performances from that early demo. To do this, in an attempt to remain true to our guiding tape method, I played the parts off the computer and onto tape, and then recorded them back from the tape onto the computer.
Sometimes, when there’s a toddler napping down the hallway, but a very loud saxophone part is required, these things are necessary.
Next month we’ll see about returning to our 4-track roots.
Updates
How I Stopped Trying to Quit Music: An essay hat shares a bit more about the story behind the launch of this newsletter. The truth is that making music has been one of the most fraught and frightening adventures of my life. I took at 10+ year break, and It’s been good to be back. If you want to know more about that story, this is the piece to read:
Bound: The Live Book-Making Performance: Some of you may remember the book-binding project I directed last Fall called Bound. I’ve built a new page here on Substack that finally displays all the beautiful volumes we built in that exhibit in full. Be sure to put on the exhibit’s original soundtrack as you read!
Launching paid subscriptions (the supererogatory kind)
This week, I launched paid subscriptions for this newsletter on Substack.
So far, nothing will change. Every post and new song will still go out to every subscriber as soon as I press publish.
It has always been the plan to eventually monetize the newsletter, and I’ve been wrestling with the desire to come up with the perfect strategy before launching.
In truth, I have no plan.
The thing is, there are a few of you who have very generously made pledges to be paid subscribers, and it’s feeling increasingly foolish to go on ignoring those gestures of goodwill.
These are works of supererogation. If you also choose to become a paid subscriber, you have my heartfelt gratitude. And I do hope to find a way to celebrate and reward your courage in the future.
To those of you who have pledged to support my work financially:
