Planning a first album, a radio play

My my, it has been awhile.

Let me first say that for the past month my computer has been in and out of the computer hospital, and has been on life support ever since. A dear friend has offered to lend me his old computer until I can purchase it from him, which is pretty awesome. I say old because he just bought a new one but it is really a nice machine.

So, during my days with no computer, I spent my time practicing piano – the songwriting, the jazz chops, and the sightreading – playing guitar and doing a lot of planning. A couple of friends and I are working on a radio play together, so in the absence of any means to record we worked on the script, made casting decisions, and had lots of drinks in the name of art. Now that I’m about the have a computer again we can start the thing in earnest, and I can’t wait.

The planning extends beyond the radio play however. I’ve been meaning to make an album for years, and keep finding myself in this perpetual trap of starting something new just as I think I have all the material I want to put in. So I start feeling like I’m on the brink of the next thing in my artistic development and decide to wait until it matures, but of course it never does.

This time away from a screen has made me realize that I can’t effectively get to “the next thing” until I’ve finished the first one, and also gave me a chance to reflect on exactly how I want this process to happen. Many of these songs have lots of potential in my head but fall short with just voice and piano. However, funds being limited, I need to think hard about how I can best make this investment be worth the time and the money. Because let’s face it, I can’t afford to do this thing twice, and I’m just not willing to waste all that energy on a shitty album.

Since my time in the studio is going to be limited, I want to know exactly what to record when I go in. This means having a pretty good idea ahead of time of what kinds of overdubs and instrumentation I’m going to need. Fortunately, having a computer again means that I can record the songs with a lower sound quality but still have the means to play with different arrangements and voicings.

And so begins pre-production for my very first album. It’s about frigging time.

~ by Natasha Duchene on June 22, 2008.