Mistakes, Failures and Missteps

Being an independent solo musician is not that difficult. You aren’t responsible or accountable to anyone but yourself and there aren’t other voices you have to take into account when making decisions or to follow a path (creatively, technical or business). You are an island and the music you make are smoke signals you send to other islands that are more often than not, missed or ignored. Such is life as an islander.

This is how I generally think of this hobby (lets be super real here, this whole project is a hobby, to think it’s anything more than a model train set, golf or HAM radio is delusional), But sometimes I get it in my head that it could be something more, like a real legitimate music thing(1) and when that happens I start thinking I may be able to build a bridge off my island. This is where I start making foolish mistakes, experience some embarrassing failures (to me anyway) and have enough cringe material to keep my self awareness finely tuned for years to come.

I just want to use this space to highlight some of my mistakes, failures and missteps, mostly because it’s entertaining for me, but maybe it’ll help others who happen across this piece.

First, the big one. My last LP, “(Re) Routed.”

I thought this was my “Citizen Kane” (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). I was so convinced of this that I spent an enormous sum of money to have it pressed on vinyl. Double record set, colored 180 gram vinyl, gatefold jacket the works. I had 300 pressed (that’s 600 records). I recorded it on one of Boston’s finest studios, even hired a professional string quartet to record two of the songs.

I released the digital and CD version of this record on a label, and here’s the first embarrassing thing. I was so excited for this record to come out, but the label messed up uploading the release so the date of the release I had been sharing on social media and in emails for weeks came and went with nothing. I emailed the label several times and never got a response. A few days later, i believe it was on a Sunday night, the upload showed up. I know and understand that no one really cares about stuff like this, but it was just so deflating that something I put my everything into was such an after thought to this label. I believe the mistake here was putting faith in a 3rd party that they would care as much about the thing as I did, which I understand is not fair and that’s why it’s my mistake.

How Many Copies?

Moving on, but sticking with (Re) Routed. Remember how I said I got it pressed on vinyl? 300 copies? Would you like to guess how many were sold? If you guessed about 90, you would be correct. I have a daily reminder of this in that the apartment I live in is quite small, it’s a loft-style apartment with very little storage, so every morning I get to see the stack of boxes holding some 500 records collecting dust. Every now and again I just feel like pitching them in the dumpster that’s right outside the side door to my building. Yes, pressing this record was something I wanted to do. Getting any vinyl pressed was a thing I’d mentioned, in public posts, a number of times in the past. So yeah, score one! I did a thing I wanted, now I have to live with the consequences of that decision.

The record is now over two years old, the vinyl is still for sale on the Bandcamp page, but I think the last time a copy was ordered was last summer (2019).

Engage Autopilot!

Next, let’s talk about record labels. I was introduced to a record label through a music publisher that at one time expressed interest in publishing some of my music. The label owner was receptive and we agreed to work together. The label has an outstanding reputation and is a good and decent label and I’m not going to speak ill of them in any way. But what I will do is detail a mistake I made.

My intent was to work with this label because this was going to free me up from doing all of the release stuff, the promotion, the distribution, all of that stuff and in exchange we split whatever revenue the record makes. It’s pretty easy, no weird 360 stuff, no advances or loans or budgets to make a record. I make a thing, they put it out. Easy peasy.

The problem comes from the fact that I had an expectation that the label was going to solve my promotion problem (I’ll get to the fact that I had no problem in the first place and that my perception was skewed, thus resulting in bad expectations). I thought with a well established label that an audience would just automatically materialize, with a few emails from them and poof, this thing is on autopilot.

This is not the case. This never happened, and after a couple releases something became quite clear: it will never happen. Couple this with the foul up on the release of (Re) Routed, I realized that I should not put any faith in anything when it comes to this music stuff. There are no magic bullets, no shortcuts and no one-thing-will-solve-a-problem-you-think-you-have.

For now, I am not looking for or interested in record labels. Doing the release stuff is so much easier and requires almost no effort now to get material up on every single platform and also costs peanuts to do (I used DistroKid on the last EP). And since I’m no longer interested in promotion or marketing of any flavor, why do I need anyone else to attempt to provide that service?

I think if I were more talented and my records didn’t sound so amateurish I would have slightly different opinions, but dealing with reality is far better than dealing with “what if.”

Hubris! Take the Wheel!

Here’s some cringe. Being so proud of (Re) Routed and having it on vinyl I took upon myself to reach out to a very well known and well established artist. I’m not going to mention any names, because it’s not important, but I did reach out and after several weeks this person was kind enough to respond and I told them how important their music was to me and how i made a thing and I’d love to send them a copy. They, being as kind as they are, agreed. I sent them a record and thankfully I’ve never heard anything back, and it’s been almost two years. I know exactly what I was thinking, that this person would listen and be blown away by my work and then talk about it, but that is not what happened. I try not to have regrets and in the grand scheme of things none of this even approaches anything that could be considered a Big Deal, but I regret that. So yes, more cringe for the cringe bucket. Yes, this entry here is a bit tongue’n cheek because of the classic Wayne Gretzky quote (you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take). But the lesson, for me anyway, is to make sure pride and hubris don’t hop in the driver’s seat too often.

Eh, This Doesn’t Sound Better, Just Different

Mixing. Mixing music is very difficult. It’s mostly an art with a whole truck load of science to back it up. Like most arts, there’s a craft to it, and you have to constantly practice that craft in order to “get good” at it (whatever value of “good” you want to use here). Typically, in mixes the “good” is a rather objective measure of your work against someone who makes “good” mixes. A good mix has lots of different qualities you can use to describe it: clear, good separation, measured and appropriate use of low-end frequencies, colorful (with intention), appropriate dynamic range (balance of loud and quiet), effective use of the stereo image. There are probably thousands more but i think this list encapsulates it without getting too nerdy.

Mixing is something i care about a lot. I want to be good at it. I practice it a lot. I go back into my old sessions, remove every single plugin (like equalizers, compressors, limiters, distortion generators etc.) and just do a mix of a song over again. It’s good practice, and I think I’m getting better at it, the material I mixed last year compared to something I may do this evening is pretty noticeable. My mixes today are clearer, less “muddy” have better separation (separation of each instrument so you can hear each one) and so on.

The mistake I’ve made, and made it twice, is to think that I’ve gotten so advanced in my capabilities as a mixer where I actually re-released two older records thinking that my progress was such that it warranted a whole new release. Even if that was the case, which at the time it was not, without any shadow of doubt, it was not, you just have to let the past be the past, warts and all.

I could do that with everything I decide to release, just constantly remix things because at whatever point in time I’m at things will sound marginally better. It’s foolish and stupid and I wish I had never done it, but now that I have, I won’t be changing it.

Faking it till you make it.

This is a common mantra of those who have not “made it.” After thinking about this a lot, with respect to this project, I cannot define what “made it” is. It is not my desire to do music full time. I think that would sap every last bit of enjoyment I have for making music right out of me. So, if “made it” cannot be defined by some monetary benchmark, then what is it? Audience size perhaps. Yes, that probably makes a lot of sense. And with that the cousin of audience size: people who care about what i do.

In the past I used to post photos and updates with whatever project I was working on, with some amount of detail, post short Instagram videos of clips of songs being worked on and especially when I would spend the day in the recording studio. Look! I’m a Big Deal! No!!! Stop!!! That’s too much faking! I am not, and this foolishness isn’t helping. People don’t have the cycles to care. They have enough going on to care about what a hobbyist is doing with their hobby. It is a mistake to think that people care. And by that i mean not friends and family. Friends and family, if you are fortunate to have them, do care, and that’s great. That’s actually pretty amazing really. But to think anyone outside of that circle does care is a waste of time… for me (as a hobbyist). For large, legitimate artists, doing that stuff is part of what you sign up to do because it’s actually part of the job description to keep the audience engaged.

As a hobbyist, that is nowhere near anything that i need to do. As a hobbyist, my job is to work on my hobby. Now again, my behavior in the past is not a hanging offense I believe, but it is pretty cringey. The lesson I take away is that putting myself in the shoes of others, to try to shift my own perspective helps level-off any false expectations I may have. Spend time and resources on the thing that is important and ignore those things that are not. As a hobbyist, engagement is not a primary concern. I’m not trying to move units, count likes or chase clout.

Alright, there are more examples, but this is getting long. I think what’s important to take away from any of this, if you even got here, is to keep perspective. Yes, things can and will change. Being capable of seeing a thing like a hobby evolve is a wise thing to do, but worrying about stuff that isn’t directly related to the work, as I’ve spelled out in a meandering sort of way, is just going to set you up for disappointment. Which also isn’t to say to take risks! I need to learn more about that and what that means, and that is important. It’s all just a balancing act. We’ll figure it out.