I released some new music last week on July 26th. It is my first release that is exclusive to my Faircamp site. I don’t have it up on Bandcamp or any streaming service. It is called Perpetually apologizing to the people of Jupiter and it is a two track EP of noise-ish, ambient-ish sounds with some pretty melodies hiding in there. The first track is called “Let’s Go to the Moon” and the second track is titled “We’re Going to be Okay, We Going to Make it to the Moon.”
Originally the second track was written over two years ago now in July of 2022. It was meant to be submitted to a compilation that I saw a post about on Twitter. The theme of the compilation was going to be around the number thirteen, so every track was meant to be thirteen minutes long. I made some time, worked out an idea, and made a recording. At this point though it had probably been a few weeks since the call for tracks had been put out. Looking at the profile for the label they hadn’t posted much since their post asking for interest in making tracks for the compilation. I reached out via DM to see if they were still doing it. The person behind the label got back to me that they had to move on to some other releases/projects and wouldn’t be doing the compilation after all.
I was a little bummed, but I tried to move on thinking that this track could be the first of a new EP of music. The title “Perpetually apologizing to the people of Jupiter” was originally the name of the track, but I figured that could be the title of the EP instead. This idea got fleshed out a little further, but I didn’t really get much done and the track has ended up sitting in a folder on my computer for the last two years.
As I think back on things this connects to how at the time I was making music projects too big in scope. I was wanting to release multiple things per year, but I wanted them to be 4-6 track EPs and full length albums. I was getting caught up in so many details of how to do things that I wasn’t focusing on actually making music. This made it so this project and several others have just sat on my computer in a half finished state, at best.
Part of the journey of making this record is also how I have come to terms with my goals for making music and how I want to work as an artist. I have come to better understand myself and what I am capable of and when I can consider something is “done” and ready to be put out into the world. I realize that I would rather share what I can do with people instead of letting stuff sit on a hard drive because I’m afraid of it not being good enough. I am also coming to terms with the idea of learning in public when it comes to music I create. I can only do what I know and I only learn more by putting things out into the world for others to hear. I am getting over the scariness of putting something out that people won’t like. As long as I enjoy it I know it is worth sharing. Then on the next project I can take what I learned from the last one and make the next project that much better. I won’t release the best music I’ve ever done every time. But, I can release the best I can do at that time and learn and grow from there.
With all of that I started thinking how I should just get this thirteen minute track out and into the ears of some people. At first I thought I would just have one track, but I knew making one more to pair with it wouldn’t slow me down too much. Especially considering how I had this new found approach to making music where once something sounded or felt right I moved on, I knew I could get something together and I wouldn’t be stuck again with unfinished work.
To create the first track I took some samples of strings and the melody from the second and loaded them onto my SP404 MK2. I sat down with them and started breaking them up into chops on the pads and played around with effects. I kept the momentum by trying things out and once I liked something I set that in stone and moved onto the next thing. If I tried out an effect and thought it sounded cool, I was going to use that effect and not try out others. If I played a pattern of the samples and it was fun, I was good with it. I played one bit and thought that would be a good way to start the track, so that is how the first song begins. I didn’t let my brain stop to think about all of the “what if this or that” stuff that could get in my way. I just went with what felt good at the time. In one session I had the idea for the track and put down a recording and in one take I had what is on the record now.
I took the same approach to making the cover art. I found a picture I had taken on a trip to Chicago in July of 2022 that I made all glitchy with an app on my phone. At first I was going to use this as some inspiration or maybe a starting point, but then I thought it looked pretty cool. So, I put my artist name on it and the title of the record and called it good.
After listening to the tracks and getting some minor edits done to add a fade in I decided to call the release ready. I had the tracks and the artwork done and now I just needed a release date. Looking at my calendar I landed on July 26th. It was soon and was a time where I knew I could get things together in time when it comes to updating my Faircamp site. For the release process of this new music I added in updating each page on my music site to have the liner notes and info about each release. This information was on my main site here where I have the blog and was being linked to from the music site. But, that seemed clunky and I wanted to simplify things. Now, each release on my music site has all of its information in one place and this site can be the blog and just other information pages.
Getting this release out in July is fun for me too since as I was working on it I saw that the original track was made in July of 2022 and now two years later to the month I am making new music and releasing it all together. It feels good to have two tracks to release that in a way represent two sides of my music making process from two different time periods. One side that was too complicated and over thought and the other side that is more focused and willing to make mistakes.
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