Monday, February 09, 2009

Small Chances

This was a weird weekend. Broken car doors, big fight, crying in public, boring church conference, lost my DS... new rear wheel on my fixie, no photo-taking, found my DS, saw old ex-church friends, lots of sitting indoors, and recording.

B and I recorded a few tracks using Garageband yesterday afternoon. We were indoors for most of the day, which might have been unfortunate, since it was such a nice, overcast day outside, but it was worth it. I'm always glad to expand my creative pursuits, especially musically, since I played music (orchestra, "praise" band) up until the end of college. I've never really written my own music before. It's so hard to make something good. IMO, the biggest challenge is figuring out when to play and when not to play. Controlling your ideas and forcing them into an organized, thought-out package that makes sense and isn't just haphazard. That's where musicality comes in.

Recording requires a level of precision and perfectionism that usually incites my anxiety. And even though I secretly enjoy singing, I am frightened to bits when doing it in front of others. I don't have a very robust voice, it's more akin to a whisper, but if Vashti Bunyan can do it, then it must be OK. So to start small, I decided to cover a simple folk song that I can actually play on the guitar. It's only the first verse too. Rough and short, but at least I made something. B did the mixing/ effects. It's called "Second Chances" (original by Small Sur).

You can hear it here. (Only 10 downloads allowed since this is a free account, but I assume that will more than cover the readership of this post, haha.)

5 comments:

erinhazel said...

great great job!! sounds beautiful. i am so proud of you.

Fern said...

Thanks, Erin! How kind of you!

Also, totally unrelated, but do you like to watch Fringe? It's been touted as the new X-Files, and since you were really into that show in middle school (?), thought I'd recommend it, as someone who doesn't watch a ton of TV.

erinhazel said...

i have not watched that, no but i *have* heard of it. is it out on dvd yet? (i don't watch any tv these days unless i can rent it).

also are you going to write your own song and record it anytime soon?

Fern said...

Erin, I don't think it's on DVD yet. The pilot was in Setp 2008. B just downloads them from some site, but I can burn some for you, if you'd like. Remind me.

Fern said...

Oh, haha, yes also I should try to write songs. If I can get over my relative lack of skill, that is.