For another few years, I tried.įinally, I had to admit something to myself.
I kept trying to write, but nothing sounded good. It was a good summer.īut while I was enjoying playing in my ensembles and exploring where I could take my songs, I was still blocked when it came to creating anything new. I got to the finals in a songwriting competition (for songs I had already written) and was even awarded partial scholarship if I wanted to move there for school. I spent a summer in Boston studying music. Eventually things got better for me in my personal life, and I emerged from my solitude, even made a few friends. I decided to take a break from writing and focus instead on performing and learning jazz guitar. Lyrics were uninspired and the whole process, which used to bring me such joy, felt forced. That may sound dramatic, but all of my new songs began to feel stale and derivative. Hours would melt away while I was in my little den, and I would emerge with a final product that I was so proud of.īut then one day, something happened.
The detailed nature of mixing was both infuriating and deeply rewarding. I taught myself audio production through experimentation.įor holidays, I would ask for new gear: a purple flanger peddle please, to go with my orange distortion. I taught myself how the microphones worked and I learned through trial-and-error that you can get a bigger sound by duplicating a track, panning one left and one right and moving them slightly out of sync. The day my dad bought me an MBox 1 was one of the best days of my life.
I survived this time by secluding myself in my basement and writing and recording my songs. An important friendship had just ended, I was at a new school that was big and anonymous and my band of four years had disintegrated-my band, which was profoundly intertwined with my identity. I went through a particularly rough period when I was 19.
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