It’s easy to point fingers at other bands and say, “this is what they did wrong on that album.” It’s a lot harder to do it to yourself.
I am not sure that’s enough to make it an effort not worth making. I really should understand what I struggle with in my own music, especially as I start to propagate it on Bandcamp - where I already have content - and on Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify (and others now, too).
I need to understand what I do poorly, and why. Otherwise my music will never go even as far as it’s supposed to go.
Look, I know I’m never going to be a rock star. I’m too old now, in my mid-fifties, and my musical tastes are too eclectic; I’m not really a “progressive musician,” even though I write some progressive songs, nor am I a “rock musician” because I’m happy to write jazz and country too, when it strikes me, and I even have some ridiculous rap songs - or, well, what I call rap, as my sons roll their eyes at me.
Hey, I’ve already started criticizing myself! Let’s dive in.
First, I really do lack a marketable identity. I have songs like Pink Floyd, I have songs like Rush, I have songs like Jean-Luc Ponty, I have songs like Pat Travers, Yes, and so forth and so on. But if you were looking for a genre, or for a musician like some other musician you know, I’m simply not that guy. I chase what I want to write. My muse is a butterfly, going hither and yon, today writing silly songs for my fake band “Andy and the Ne’er-Do-Wells,” and tomorrow writing evidence that my depressive tendencies really do remain pretty strong.
Second, I … well… I mentioned my fake band “Andy and the Ne’er-Do-Wells,” but … it’s still me. All of it. All of my music, except for a few bits here and there, is written, performed, and recorded by me, sitting alone in my office or at my drum kit, or in my car on an isolated road somewhere. I write effectively 100% of my own lyrics, with a few suggested words here and there from someone saying “… why’d you sing that?”
The music I write has the same problem: it’s me, accompanying myself, on everything. As with lyrics, there’re a few spots here and there where someone might suggest … something, but in a song with five minutes of music and four verses, chances are one instrument has one second of someone else’s suggestion, and chances are that one verse might have one word of external input.
Maybe. I have an awful lot of music where no-one else’s input factors in.
It’s not that I reject others’ input, either. Shoot, I beg for it: I send out my music to a set of people and would love for them to say “that didn’t work,” or “have you considered…” at any point. It’s just that feedback tends to rely on the moment; I get reviews but not commentary, most of the time, and that’s a little passive.
The fact that I’m accompanying myself is another criticism of my own music. I have a tendency to play awfully “busy.” On bass, for example, I’m pretty melodic most of the time: I play a lot of riffs, even in the context of a given chord. That carries over to drums and guitar, too: my music has a tendency to sound very… packed. I’ve worked hard to give it some dynamics, with sections that relax and go quieter, over time, but realistically, listening to my own music… I can see listeners being exhausted.
It’s because I’m accompanying myself. If I’m in a band context, even a duo, I am able to rely on someone else to breathe life into the music. I can play back. I can hold notes. I can find the groove, and push and pull the beat with the others I’m playing with; it gives the music context and depth.
But when I’m doing everything? There’s no-one to nod at as things lock in. There’s no-one to grimace at something that doesn’t work. I end up careening through riffs on every instrument unless I listen to it enough to gather the patience to not overplay. This shows up most in the rhythm section, where on drums I push myself too hard (and too fast), and on bass I tend to play so hard and so heavily that the bass dominates the sound.
I also really struggle to, well, hear my own music in its own context. My mixes are busy because my playing is busy, sure, but I also tend to get caught up in how things were recorded, and that means I end up mixing down … poorly. I have some decent mixes, but they’re accidental, I think; most of my mixes are victims of my bias toward the instruments I enjoyed playing the most for a given song.
(This means that my vocals are almost always buried in the mix, because not only do I not sing particularly well, I really don’t care for my own voice - yet it’s the only voice I have, so I carry my own vocal duties most of the time. And since I tend to amplify what I enjoy in my own music, well, the vocals get short shrift nearly every time.)
I’d love to find people to work with, someone to bounce ideas off of, a group of someones to jam with and collect ideas with, to do that “yes, that works” thing with, and to have someone say “You know, that has potential but how about not,” someone to help focus and refine ideas, someone to contribute with me.
I’ve never seen myself as a solo artist, but that’s what I’ve ended up being, and that’s never going to satisfy me.