I think one of my first goals is to actual make it through 50/90, whether or not I've written fifty songs. I'm currently enrolled in an online history class that doesn't finish until the first week of August, and with any luck, the fall semester should be my last semester of university. I've also been reading a 1,000-page book in order to write an essay for a scholarship. So I'll be busy.
But as far as instrumental goals go, I don't have very many. I've been getting more into the technical aspects of recording, so I have a lot of ideas about audio engineering and mixing, but I don't have very many about composition. Similarly, I've wanted to use particular instruments or techniques, but I don't have any ideas of what music to play with them.
I had this same sort of problem with the last two songs I wrote.
For "Cataract," I just wanted to try palm muting and doubling guitar parts with electric piano.
For "Kaputt," I wanted to try a lot of things, mostly chords in open D tuning and harpsichord.
But for both of those songs, I didn't try very hard when writing the chord progression. "Cataract" is B A F#m E, and "Kaputt" is mostly D C Em G. Since I didn't have any ideas for my own chord progressions yet I had other things I wanted to try, I just wrote really simple chord progressions and layered my own stuff on top of them. But that only gets me so far, and I don't like relying on that. It's a bit limited.
In any case, my nebulous goals for this year:
- "Staircase mixing" - this will become apparent when I do it, and I'll probably write a separate post about it when it's finished.
- I've had the idea for a few months to try to write a piece that adheres to the same sort of rules as a sonnet. I don't know if I'll get to that or not, but I'd like to try it eventually.
- Use more twelve-string guitar. I've had my twelve-string for just over half a year (I got it on 2 January), and I've used it on only two things - "Anybody Can't," which I want to re-record (that version is too slow, and I want to use a regular six-string for the chords), and a cover of the Zombies' "Leave Me Be." I've been playing around with a few things, but I don't know if I'll be able to stretch a whole song out of them.
- There are a lot of other instruments and techniques that I'd like to use, but I'm not as concerned about them as I am about twelve-string guitar.
- Harmonica. I used it on a few songs during FAWM. I'm at least decent on it.
- Trombone. I used it for one song during FAWM, but I replaced it with melodica when I re-recorded it.
- Slide guitar. The only thing I can play with slide guitar is part of Argent's "Hold Your Head Up," which doesn't require hitting any specific notes. I have the least hope in slide guitar of any of these.
- For the past few months, I've been recording a hymn every week using mandolin. I'd like to experiment with that same sort of paradigm - one mandolin for melody and an-other for accompaniment.
- I've sort of ended my period of keyboard composition, but I may go back and write a few if I can't think of any other ideas.
- I've been playing around with guitar chord inversions and finger-picking, and that will probably result in some 50/90 songs. I just need to add melodies. Maybe I'll use some more mandolin for that. I feel kind of bad that I've been using mandolin exclusively for my hymn recording project and no-thing else.
And, of course, one of my goals for 50/90 is just to finish with more songs than I wrote last year. So as long as I get seventeen, I'll be happy.
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