Over this
two-week (!) spring break, I've been sleeping between 4 and 5AM each morning and waking up between 1 and 2PM. It's an awful sleep schedule, but I've accepted it as unavoidable. Day in and day out, I'm finding myself either recording, producing, writing, buying, or discovering music. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything's revolving around music, and I'm getting loads done as a result. By the same hand, it's driving me remotely insane. In a good way.
I've been forgoing sleep and constantly musicing because I
know that time is of the essence when I'm home. Time is the medium I'm working in when I make music, and I know that I don't have very much of it before I have to go back to school for another 9 weeks. Once I'm back at school, there'll be no time for this stuff. I have to get as much done as musically possible now. I'm not rushing this full-length album at all, and neither is Jeremy. But it's giving the whole project a sense of urgency, spontaneity, and immediacy, which is something I've long desired to capture in a recording anyways.
So fuck sleep, and long live pursuing a passion like it's your last day on Earth, I guess.
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These are songs and the order that we're thinking of placing them in:
1. Dried Out
2. Unclothed, Uninvited
3. The Drop (pt. 1)
4. Propeller
5. From A Line
6. Interlude
7. T.V. Snow
8. +
Bits have been recorded for all eight of these songs. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to be focusing solely on recording the remaining parts. I'll worry about mixing over the summer. Mixing's going to take a while anyways - we're not just dealing with piano and vocals anymore. Now it's guitar, piano, cello, drums, banjo, vocals, and noises. Thank God Jeremy's here to finally push the project to expand its sound with an array of new instruments; we're looking at a much folkier release this time around. At the same time, there are some tracks that veer on post-rock and even shoegaze. It's still very much a diverse, do-whatever-the-fuck type project. But it's becoming a bit more focused, which I approve of a lot.
While we're back at school, we hope to complete the writing for this album. We're shooting for 10 or 11 tracks in total.
I'm most worried about promotion with this release. Now that I've finally given up the YouTube ghost, I'm wondering how I'm going to generate interest in what I make. I've been pursuing a couple of outlets (namely a couple of subcommunities on SoundCloud), but I need something more. Someone suggested that I try mutual promotion, like: a band pimps videosforpictures, videosforpictures pimps a band in return. This strategy would work to an extent, I'm sure, but I don't know how effective my attempts would be. Another idea came to mind that I'd compile a list of 100 music blogs and labels to send an e-mail out to in advance, saying "Hey - we've got a full-length here. Blah blah blah. Check it out." But I don't want to spam people's inboxes. I'm sure they get enough of that as is.
I guess part of the problem with the music world is that you have to be either ubiquitous or lucky. One path requires a lot of effort to get your name "out there," the other path requires almost no effort. If I could put on a proper live show, I would so try for ubiquity. But instead, videosforpictures is that project that will just have to keep working in the digital shadows until a big name comes through and says "Hey. We like what you do." And from there, the listeners start coming. I know that. But how the fuck do I
get there?
It's a question that will either answer itself with time or will leave videosforpictures in a state of permanent obscurity. Either way, music is something that I really like to do, and I'll only give it up when I'm dead.
In other news, I still smell like smoke from the bonfire earlier today.
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